Lachlan Murdoch meets with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ukraine
News Corp chairman Lachlan Murdoch travelled to the Ukraine capital where President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned the war could escalate to a wider conflict.
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News Corp Chairman Lachlan Murdoch has visited Ukraine and met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv.
Mr Zelenskyy’s office said the meeting took place at the weekend and sent a “very important signal” at a time some international media attention was drifting away from Ukraine’s war with Russia.
He warned the war could still escalate to a much wider conflict as he thanked journalists for continuing to put themselves in danger in Ukraine.
Joining Mr Murdoch at the meeting was Benjamin Hall, 41, who came under attack and was severely injured when his car was shelled during the first weeks of the war while he was reporting for Fox News.
Two colleagues, Pierre Zakrzewski, 55, a cameraman, and Oleksandra Kuvyshnova, 24, a fixer, were killed in the attack.
Mr Zelenskyy commended Hall for his “outstanding” bravery.
Jerome Starkey, defence editor of The Sun, also attended the meeting where Mr Zelenskyy spoke about criticism of the slow pace of the counteroffensive.
“For some reason, people treat it like a movie and expect that there will be no long pauses in the events, that the picture before their eyes will always change, that there will be some surprises every day,” he said.
“But for us, for our warriors, this is not a movie. These are our lives. This is daily hard work. And it will not be over as quickly as we would like, but we have no right to give up and we will not.”
Mr Zelenskyy said Ukraine would not be able to defend itself if Western support dropped as he predicted the war could still escalate further.
“Ukraine today [is] in the centre of these global risks of this Third World War,” he said.
“And I really think that Russia will push until the United States and China together will tell them very, very seriously to go out of [our] territory.”
After the summer counteroffensive failed to recapture significant territory, there is growing concern in Kyiv that Western apathy could lead to a drop-off in military aid.
Mr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine was defending the West from Russian aggression at a significant cost in lives.
“We are losing our people, not losing Europeans, Americans. I don’t wish you, of course, to lose your soldiers,” he said.
“If they kill us, if they destroy us, they will occupy NATO countries very quickly.”
While in Kyiv, Mr Murdoch also met Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, and laid flowers at the Wall of Remembrance, a site commemorating Ukrainian soldiers who have lost their lives in the conflict.
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Originally published as Lachlan Murdoch meets with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ukraine
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