Ukraine President Zelensky, tired of war, urges U.N. to push for peace

Sept. 25 (UPI) -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky decried the continued occupation of his country by Russian forces in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday in New York.

Zelensky said his country has lost 13,000 people in the last five years of fighting. He held up up a $10 bullet, calling it "the price of a human life on our planet." Some 30,000 people have been wounded and an estimated 1.5 million people have been forced to leave their homes.

"My country has lost a part of its territory and keeps losing its citizens almost every single day," Zelensky said. "These numbers, awful numbers, are reported here annually with only one small correction -- they keep growing each year."

He called on the United Nations and all the leaders of the world to push for peace, where a country's value is determined by their deeds and accomplishments, not by the size of their military or nuclear arsenal. He said war remains the biggest threat to humanity.

Zelensky did not mention a phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump that has launched an impeachment inquiry into the American leader. A transcript of the call was released shortly after Zelensky's speech.

House investigators will look into the call to see whether Trump threatened to withhold military aid to Kiev in exchange for Zelensky's government investigating the family of 2020 Democratic candidate Joe Biden. The former vice president's son, Hunter, had worked for a Ukrainian gas company between 2014 and early this year.