“It is not the enemy who leaves like this. It is the Ukrainians who expel the occupier at a high price.” In his daily speech on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed the liberation of many Ukrainian cities in the Kherson region. According to him, at least 41 towns in the south of the country have been liberated.
“Everything that is happening now has been achieved through months of brutal struggles,” he explained, believing that the liberation of these cities was achieved “through courage, pain and loss.”
“Like in the east of our country, in the Kharkiv region. Like before, in the north, in the Kyiv, Sumy and Chernigiv regions. Now it is the Mykolaiv and Kherson regions.”
170,000 square kilometers to be cleared
But the Ukrainian forces, which have been leading a major counteroffensive for several weeks, will have to deal with thousands of mines left by the Russian army.
“The occupants left behind thousands of mines and unexploded ordnance,” laments Volodymyr Zelensky. “I’ve often heard that demining Ukraine will take decades. We can’t wait that long.”
According to the Ukrainian president, about 170,000 square kilometers of territory must be cleared.
Satellite images taken in early November also reveal that trench lines have been dug in Crimea. These new lines of defense suggest that Russian military leaders fear a continued Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Kherson region east of the Dnieper River and south of Zaporizhia.
Source: BFM TV
