In his address to a joint session of Congress this morning, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko requested lethal military aid for his country’s soldiers fighting “on the front for freedom and democracy.”

After first thanking the United States for showing solidarity with Ukraine and its people, Poroshenko noted that the Ukraine’s soldiers “need more equipment, both lethal and non-lethal.”

“Please understand me correctly,” Poroshenko continued. “Blankets, night-vision goggles are also important. But one cannot win the war with blankets. More importantly, one cannot keep the peace with a blanket.”

Earlier in the address, Poroshenko called Russia’s annexation of Crimea and subsequent aggression in Eastern Ukraine “the worst security crisis since the U.S.–U.S.S.R. standoff in 1962.” He declared Ukraine’s “underequipped and underappreciated” soldiers to be “the only thing that now stands between reality of the peaceful coexistence and the nightmare of the full lapse into the previous century, into the new Cold War.”

You can view Poroshenko’s full address to Congress here.