H.E. Ms Larysa Gerasko:

The Deputy asked many questions. I will try to keep everything in mind. First of all, we are very grateful to Ireland, as a government and a people, for humanitarian aid. Ukraine has received much humanitarian aid, mainly through the Polish border, from the Slovak Republic and from Romania. What we need in terms of humanitarian aid is medicine, first of all, and body armour and, of course, weapons, but not in Ireland's case. By the way, we are grateful for yesterday's decision to supply 200 pieces of body armour and food for our military. Believe me, however; 200 is not enough.

It is not only a matter of weapons, of course. We need them to protect our defenders - not only Ukrainian military forces but also defenders or participants from the territorial defence units. The participants of these units are ordinary people. They are not military personnel. We need ambulances. Two ambulances have already been sent to Ukraine and an additional nine are ready to go but we need more. Unfortunately, the situation is terrible. I know the Irish Red Cross Society also supplies a huge amount of clothes and humanitarian aid for civilians but I want to underline that what we need is medicine for wounded civilians and military personnel.

I will give an explanation on diplomats and, for instance, closing the seaports etc. By the way, many other countries - I do not remember exactly which countries - took the decision unilaterally to expel Russian diplomats; not only EU member states but also other countries. We have no time to wait. That is the main message. We do not have time to wait. Every day and every hour means dozens of human lives, both civilian and military.

For us, this is a defensive war. We are on our soil and our territory. We never invaded any other country. It is extremely important for us that not only EU member states, but EU member states in particular, make and take decisions more rapidly. It is time to act. It is not time to talk. I am sorry for saying that but keeping such a silence means that the country - it does not matter which country - is involved, not de jurebut de facto, in this war. We are paying a huge price not only for our freedom but for security in Europe in the European Union.

I am sure that all democratic countries now have to be stronger, take a firmer stance and act very rapidly. For instance, Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014 and Moldova in 1992. Many democratic countries have all this time been discussing what to do and what package of sanctions to impose against Russia etc. What we have now is an even worse war than the Second World War. It is time to act. Of course, we will use all possible means - diplomatic and any others - to find solutions to end this war. Many countries actually proposed to be mediators during these Russian-Ukrainian talks. We are ready to accept any assistance from many countries to stop this brutal and barbaric war.

As regards Chernobyl, on the second day Chernobyl was seized by Russian militarists. As far as I remember, 92 employees of the Chernobyl nuclear plant were detained as well as 130 Ukrainian military who secure the station. Then, I do not remember the exact date, the Russians destroyed the electricity line. One of the energy blocks was operating on an alternative energy system. Then our special service for Chernobyl station repaired this electricity. That is very important. There is the first energy block which was collapsed and there are three others. The third block in the absence of electricity and power will stop and explode. The situation is terrible. Then the Russians again broke this electricity line. Our employees repaired it again. It is up and down and we never know what happens next because not only the Ukrainian side but even the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, lost control. It would be a complete disaster, not only for Ukraine but for all of Europe and also Russia.

I am happy that Putin is in some kind of bunker. He does not care about anything because he does not care about his own population or about the young Russian soldiers, who are 18 and 19 years old. He used them like cannon meat really. It is very strange that the Russian mothers of these young soldiers do not care about them. Our special service has telephone records of talks between parents and these soldiers and some of them say, "Listen, it is pretty dangerous here and many other soldiers have been killed". The parents say, "Keep strong". It is unbelievable. As I said in my statement, the Russian side buried the corpses of its soldiers in a common grave or use crematoria and those parents never find any of the bodies, nothing.