Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky marked the 500th day of the war with Russia with a video salute to his troops shot on Snake Island, which became a logo of resistance at the starting of the fighting.
Zelensky said that the recapture of an island in the Black Sea a 12 months ago “is great proof that Ukraine will regain every inch of its territory” and thanked its soldiers in video posted on Facebook Saturday.
The small island is widely often known as the site of a viral video released early in the war, by which a Ukrainian soldier says “Russian warship, go fuck yourself” in response to Moscow forces’ demand that the island be surrendered or bombed.
Russia took control of the island in February 2022, but Ukraine regained it in late June 2022 after a series of military airstrikes.
“Let the freedom that each one our heroes of different times wanted for Ukraine and that have to be won now be a tribute to all those that gave their lives for Ukraine,” Zelensky said in a Saturday video by which he got out of the boat and went on foot. through a rocky section to put flowers at the monument. “We are going to win needless to say!”
It wasn’t clear when the video was shot because Zelensky was in Turkey on Saturday. The president announced that he would return with five commanders of the Azov battalion that defended the southern port city of Mariupol from inside an enormous steel plant during the 80-day Russian siege. reported the Recent York Times. They surrendered to Russia and were later sent to Turkey in a prisoner exchange negotiated by Turkey.
“We’re coming home from Turkey and bringing our heroes home” Zelensky wrote on Twitter. “They may finally be with their families.”
The extreme fighting in eastern and southern Ukraine was cause for celebration.
A Russian missile strike on the city of Lyman killed eight civilians and injured 13 others on Saturday morning, Ukraine’s interior ministry said. The strike also set fire to a house, a printing house and three cars, reported the BBC.
The attack got here after 10 people – including a 95-year-old woman – were killed and one other 40 injured in Thursday’s rocket attack on a residential constructing in Lviv in what the city’s mayor called “one of the biggest attacks” on civil infrastructure in the region .
Elsewhere in the country, Ukraine has recorded gains around Bakhmut, the city that has been the center of some of the war’s bloodiest battles in months.
Russian forces in the war-torn city are likely experiencing low morale amid the Ukrainian counter-offensive, the UK Ministry of Defense said in an update posted on Twitter on Saturday.
“Ukrainian forces are systematically gaining ground each north and south of the Russian city,” the intelligence agency wrote. “Russian defenders are more than likely faced with poor morale, a mixture of different units and limited ability to seek out and strike Ukrainian artillery.”
“Russian leaders almost actually consider that the abandonment of Bakhmut, which is of symbolic importance as one of Russia’s few gains over the past 12 months, is politically unacceptable,” the agency continued. “Nonetheless, it is extremely likely that there are few additional reserves that will be committed to the sector.”
Those in search of an indication that the tide could also be turning in Ukraine’s favor pointed to recent figures that show that for the first time since the invasion, they could have more battle-ready tanks than Russia.
Ukraine currently controls about 1,500 tanks in comparison with Russia’s 1,400 – despite Russia starting the war with 3,400 tanks and Ukraine starting with just 987 – shows multiple data sources combined, reported Bloomberg.
No less than 2,082 Russian tanks have been destroyed, damaged, abandoned or seized since the starting of the war, in response to the Oryx intelligence group, which records only losses it may possibly confirm.
Earlier this week, British defense chief Admiral Tony Radakin said that Russian forces in Ukraine had been significantly reduced.
“Russia has lost almost half the combat effectiveness of its army,” Radakin said during a parliamentary hearing.
Radakin further described Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as a “catastrophic failure” and added that Russian forces were now too “weak” to launch a counteroffensive of their very own.
Based on Radakin, nevertheless, the Ukrainian counter-offensive was effective.
“Even in the previous couple of weeks, Ukraine has reclaimed more land than Russia has in the last 12 months,” he said.
With Postal Wires