The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, thanked the population this Sunday for defending the country and when the Russian invasion turned 200 days old, still without prospects of a negotiated solution to the conflict.
“In these 200 days we have achieved a lot, but the most important, the most complicated, is yet to come,” the Ukrainian leader said in his daily message to the country.
Zelensky praised the action of the Ukrainian army, the “fighters who heroically held back the enemy” and dedicated the speech “to all those who bravely resisted for 200 days, being the exact reason Ukraine is standing.”
“We believe in you, those who are doing your job, risking your life, defending your country for all these 200 days, at –15 degrees Celsius, at +35 degrees Celsius, at 02:00 or 06:00, in any Monday or Independence Day, despite the fatigue, the tension and the danger,” he said.
The Ukrainian president individually thanked the ground troops for their “courageous and selfless work”, their “hard” work, the Air Force, which he congratulated for “successfully repelling the enemy” in the Donetsk region, and the forces naval officers remembering their “successes”.
Zelensky also expressed satisfaction with his troops, who “write the history of independence, the history of victory, the history of Ukraine.”
Ukraine claimed one of its main achievements since the start of the war, when the Defense Ministry announced on Saturday that its troops were making significant gains in the Kharkiv region.
The military offensive launched on February 24 by Russia in Ukraine has already caused the flight of almost 13 million people -more than six million internally displaced persons and almost seven million to neighboring countries-, according to the latest UN data, which places this refugee crisis as the worst in Europe since the Second World War (1939-1945).
The Russian invasion was widely condemned by the international community, which has responded by sending weapons to Ukraine and imposing sanctions on Russia in everything from banking to energy to sports.
The UN presented as confirmed 5,587 dead civilians and 7,890 wounded, emphasizing that the real figures are much higher and will only be known at the end of the conflict.
Source: TSF
