STANFORD, Calif. — In a live-streamed video address to Stanford students on Friday, embattled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offered his condolences to Americans following the deadly Uvalde, Texas elementary school shooting that left 19 students and two adults dead.
“This is impossible to understand at home,” Zelenskyy told the hundreds of Stanford students — including a handful of Ukrainian students — who filled a university auditorium to hear him speak. “This is a tragedy, and we are living in these terrible times when American people are expressing their condolences because of the death of the Ukrainians at war and we are expressing our condolences because of deaths in peace.”
Michael McFaul, director of the Institute for International Studies at Stanford and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration, said the university has deep ties to Ukraine having had 225 Ukrainian students throughout its history, and thanked him personally for addressing students calling him “a hero not just for Ukraine and Europe, but the entire world.”
