Agencies-Gaza post
Ukrainian President on Independence Day: “We will fight to the end”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on an Independence Day speech that his country would face the Russian invasion “until the end” and not make “any concession or compromise”.
“We don’t care what army you have, we only care about our land. We will fight for it to the end,” Zelensky said in a video speech on Wednesday, which also marks six months since the invasion began.
Today, Wednesday, Ukrainians celebrate 31 years since their separation from the Soviet Union, in what will be a day of defiance for the war, which has entered its seventh month.
Ukrainian Independence Day marks the six-month anniversary of the Russian-Ukrainian war on February 24, and will be marked by small-scale celebrations under the threat of attack from land, air and sea.
The Ukrainian authorities banned public gatherings in the capital, Kyiv, and imposed a curfew in the city of Kharkiv, on the front line in the east of the country, which was bombed for months.
In a show of defiance, the government placed burning Russian tanks and armored vehicles in the center of Kyiv as spoils of war.
And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned late on Tuesday of the possibility of “Russian provocations”, which he described as “abhorrent”.
“We are fighting the most serious threat to our state and also at a time when we have achieved the greatest level of national unity,” Zelensky said in a speech.
The Ukrainian military urged people to take the air raid warnings seriously.
“The Russians continue to launch air and missile attacks on civilian targets on the territory of Ukraine. Do not ignore the warnings of air strikes,” the General Staff said in a statement early Wednesday.
Zelensky told representatives of about 60 countries and international organizations who attended an online summit on Crimea on Tuesday that Ukraine would remove Russian forces from the peninsula by any means without consulting other countries in advance.
The war has killed thousands of civilians, forced more than a third of Ukraine’s 41 million people from their homes, destroyed cities and rocked global markets. It is largely stalemate, with no immediate prospect of peace talks.
In addition to Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, Russian forces have expanded their control to the south, including the coasts of the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, and parts of the eastern Donbass region, which includes Luhansk and Donetsk provinces.
The Ukrainian armed forces said about 9,000 soldiers were killed in the war.
Russia has not announced its losses, but US intelligence estimates 15,000 killed in what Moscow calls a “special military operation” to rid Ukraine of “dangerous nationalists”.
In contrast, Kyiv says the war is an unjustified act of imperial aggression.
Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union in August 1991 and the vast majority of Ukrainians voted in a referendum to declare independence.
