March 1 (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday that the changes in Iran brought about by U.S. and Israeli strikes should be “used properly” to benefit the country’s people who had withstood violence from their authorities.
Zelenskiy, speaking in his nightly video address, said Iran’s authorities had killed “tens of thousands of people in the last couple of months alone,” referring to a crackdown on protests.
Iran, he said, had “predetermined the way it is treated” by supplying attack drones to Russia in Moscow’s four-year-old conflict in Ukraine and had also “fomented wars in the region.”
“It is important that the this chance for changes in Iran be used properly,” he said. “The Iranian people were on their own for a long time, enduring violence while standing against the Iranian regime.”
He repeated his contention, stated on Saturday after the strikes began, that U.S. resolve “brings results.”
Zelenskiy thanked “everyone who is trying to prevent the spread of war” and said Russia should heed what had happened to Iranian leaders that “justice is finally served in the end.”
Zelenskiy said on Saturday that Moscow had fired more than 57,000 Iranian-designed Shahed-type drones at Ukraine during the war.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski and Bogdan KochubeyEditing by Nick Zieminski)
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