Did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ask NATO countries to send their soldiers to Ukraine right after the NATO Defence Ministers meeting in Brussels on October 17, 2024? No, that's not true: Zelenskyy did not make such an appeal there but spoke of the need for the Ukrainian army to continue to receive more military equipment from allies to fend off Russia.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on October 18, 2024. The text overlay on the screenshot of Zelenskyy talking to the press reads in Czech, translated by Lead Stories staff: "The mad dictator has called on all NATO countries to send troops to Ukraine." Another text overlay in Czech, on the video read, as translated:
Call in your men who escaped from Ukraine.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu Oct 24 07:53:25 2024 UTC)
The above video contains a screenshot of a joint press conference by Ukrainian President Zelenskyy and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte (archived here), held in Brussels on October 17, 2024, following the meeting of the EU Defence Ministers (archived here). The video and transcript of the conference are available here.
The video includes a part in which Zelenskyy answers a question from Hans van Leeuwen, a journalist from the Australian Financial Review newspaper, about Ukraine receiving military equipment from allies on an "ad hoc" basis rather than according to a plan, starting at the 24:20-minute mark of the video.
Zelenskyy's answer is the following, according to the transcript available on the NATO website (as delivered), audible at the 26:51-minute mark of the video: "And also, the plan how to equip brigades. This is the best plan what we can have really, so our messages to all the countries, just equip brigades. They can be resourced, and they can change our guys who are tired. Some of them are tired. We need to change them on the battlefield. That's why we need this resource well equipped. And this is the signal how to have real plan."
In Zelenskyy's words, there was no call for NATO countries to send soldiers to Ukraine. Zelenskyy introduced his response to the journalist's question by saying that it is difficult to "live without a plan" and that meeting in the Ramstein Group format - which is how the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, an alliance of several countries and the EU to help Ukraine by sending military equipment, is also referred to - "really helps" to discuss pressing issues such as funding and boosting long-range weapons production in Ukraine, electronic warfare, etc. He also thanked Australia for sending tanks to Ukraine. He pleaded with allies to continue sending military equipment to Ukraine, as Ukraine needs its brigades to have military capabilities to fend off Russia. He also talked about the need to rotate the brigades, as soldiers on the front line need to be replaced at some point and rest.
None of these statements by Zelenskyy involved a request to deploy NATO troops in Ukraine.
