Volodymyr Zelensky captivated the Dáil as he outlined the slaughter in his country

He wore an olive green shirt and attended the joint Dáil-Seanad meeting from his office in Kyiv, alongside the familiar yellow and blue flag.

Many in the chamber wore yellow and blue combos in solidarity with the war-torn country. Others had ribbons symbolizing swaying fields of wheat and a blue sky, a sign of this Ukraine‘s fullness.

Now the land is grey, pockmarked and littered with bodies, the sky littered with rockets and littered with attack helicopters.

Mr. Zelensky went to his radio chair with the well-known brown headrest at 10 o’clock sharp. Immediately silence fell over the chamber. The excitement of history being made gave way instead to a sober silence in the face of the atrocities and suffering responsible for that moment.

Because of this, the first international leader to address the Oireachtas had virtually no need to ape the others by quoting Yeats or Heaney or anyone else.

This should be inspirational precisely because it didn’t reach for inspiration – but instigated the sweat of need and urgency in the light of bare facts. He had no time to waste on the frills.

The President began by enumerating attacks on a food warehouse and the Russians laying mines in fields as they retreated. Our MPs’ faces were lifted and delighted as they gazed at the screens as he spoke.

They blocked the seaports and ships already loaded with agricultural goods and schools. “Why do they do that? Because for them, hunger is also a weapon,” he said.

In the martyred Mariupol they would “bomb around the clock” and not a single house was left unscathed, he said. And after the butcher of Bucha: “We do not know how many citizens of Mariupol were killed by Russia.”

He sketched a mental picture of dwellers in basements drawing maps “how to find the bodies of the dead buried in their courtyards.” The hundreds of abandoned cars and vans on the highways will tell a different story when it’s safe to examine them, he suggested.

So when he quoted “at least 167 children killed in Ukraine,” we knew that was an understatement, and all the more chilling in that light. “We do not yet know all the atrocities in Mariupol and the victims in other areas of Ukraine,” he said.

The Taoiseach took notes as he spoke. The statistics rained mercilessly – the Russian shelling of 927 educational institutions, damage to 158 hospitals, shots at 78 ambulances. “They even targeted churches and shelters where they knew for sure there was nobody but women and children.”

They came to Ukraine as a “colonization army,” said Mr. Zelensky, aware of the deep-rooted folk memory of his audience. This was followed by an echo of the Einsatzgruppen of World War II by mentioning “special groups” who accompanied the invasion and “deliberately sought out and killed teachers and community leaders in the occupied districts”.

He thanked us – and the Dáil was humbled. “You have been supporting Ukraine since the first days. Although you are a neutral country, you have not remained neutral to the catastrophe and mishaps that Russia has brought.”

That’s what the translator said by mistake – glitches – a soft word used only to underline deliberate euphemisms like “military special ops” and worse.

He expressed his gratitude to every citizen of Ireland for the humanitarian and financial support provided and “for your concern for the Ukrainian people who have found refuge on your country”.

But he added that he could not tolerate indecisiveness now. Ireland should “show more leadership” in persuading EU partners to introduce tougher sanctions on Russia. It was the title of the address. “We must end trade with Russia.”

There are politicians and business leaders “who still think that war crimes are not as bad as financial losses”. The cold-blooded logic of what he said was terrifying. The money that Russia receives goes into its war machine.

This was not a comfortable place for the Oireachtas to wallow in the warmth… our politicians were told to be unsettled by what was and was not being done. Some really should have moved in their seats – but they watched spellbound anyway.

He said goodbye by thanking us for our support of Ukraine’s EU membership, and then sat without a smile – but a narrow acknowledgment of his standing ovation.

He doesn’t need our approval, much more sympathy. He needs our help.