In his speech, which was broadcast on Facebook, Zelensky said that in the first days of the invasion, the Russian forces carried out 56 missile strikes in Ukraine, and fired 113 cruise missiles, while the Ukrainian president determines the mechanism for imposing the no-fly zone.
What does air embargo mean?
The flight ban is imposed by a country or group of countries on another country, as any aircraft flying in the range in which it is forbidden to fly is destroyed, and sometimes its air defenses are also destroyed by the countries that impose the ban, according to what explains the former Egyptian Assistant Foreign Minister Ambassador Hussein Haridi.
On the importance of a UN Security Council resolution, Haridi explained in his interview with “Sky News Arabia” that the council’s decision imbues international legitimacy only on the procedure, but the failure to issue such a decision does not restrain the will of one of the superpowers if it decided to impose an air embargo on any country, Especially if that country is weak.
In this context, the former Egyptian Assistant Foreign Minister refers to the most important facts in which the flight ban was imposed, foremost among which is the flight ban that was applied in northern and southern Iraq in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War, as well as in Yugoslavia in the 1990s during the Bosnia and Herzegovina war. .
The flight ban was also implemented in Libya in 2011, to stop warplanes from targeting civilians at the time. In addition, the ban was not implemented in Syria due to the Russian presence, the complexities of matters on the ground, so military coordination between all parties was satisfied.
Can the ban be applied in Ukraine?
Haridy asserts that the implementation of the no-fly zone is only applied to weak countries in the first place, but its application against a strong country like Russia is a very dangerous matter, and the United States officially rejected it, because of its repercussions.
Despite Ukrainian calls to impose a no-fly zone in Ukrainian airspace, the United States refused to impose a no-fly zone in Ukraine, as White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki confirmed to reporters that this step is tantamount to sending American forces to fight Russia.
Psaki added that the imposition of the no-fly zone requires the deployment of the US military to implement it, which puts the US military in the face of Russia, which America does not want to engage in.
In addition to the American refusal, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said during a visit to Poland that “the military option to help Ukraine means entering a war with Russia,” explaining that “imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine will force us to shoot down Russian fighters, which means entering the war.”
Western observers rule out NATO’s involvement in this hostile approach. According to a report by the American Fox News Network, the imposition of a no-fly zone in Ukrainian airspace would mean the outbreak of the first military conflict between two countries that together control about 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.