On day 100, Ukraine prez says ‘victory will be ours’
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday his country’s military would fend off the Russian invasion, in a video marking 100 days of Moscow’s all-out assault on its pro-democracy neighbour.
“Victory will be ours,” Zelensky said in the video.
It included Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak, recalling an impromptu message they posted outside government buildings at the onset of the war, vowing to remain in the country.
On the 100th day of Russia’s invasion, fighting is raging across the east, where Moscow’s forces are tightening their grip on Ukraine’s Donbas region.
Kyiv earlier had announced Moscow was in control of a fifth of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea and parts of Donbas seized in 2014.
The mayor of the capital said on Friday that Ukrainians “don’t want another 100 days of war” and called for continued “pressure on Putin’s regime”, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Yes we need weapons so that we can defend our common values. But we must wage war on the Russian economy so that Russia will finally leave Ukraine in peace,” he said.
“We must economically isolate Russia from the world.”
Ukraine’s foreign ministry released a statement in English saying international help for the country was “the best investment in peace and sustainable development of all mankind”.
The ministry also called for a special court to investigate war crimes in the country, saying, “Russian criminals should be brought before the Tribunal in the same way as it was with the leadership of Nazi Germany.”
Prime Minister Shmyhal earlier said the war was pushing his country closer to Europe while Russia was moving towards “isolation from the developed world”.
Thousands of people have been killed, millions sent fleeing and towns turned into rubble, since Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine on February 24.
Certain results have been achieved: Kremlin
Moscow assessed that “certain results have been achieved,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, pointing to the “liberation” of some areas from what he called the “pronazi armed forces of Ukraine”.
Putin’s troops are now concentrating their forces in the Donbas, in the east, where some of the fiercest fighting is centred on the industrial hub city of Severodonetsk.
Fighting continues in Severodonetsk’s city centre, the Ukraine president’s office said, adding that the invaders were “shelling civilian infrastructure and Ukrainian military”.
Severodonetsk “is the toughest area at the moment”, Zelensky said late on Thursday.
“For 100 days, they have been levelling everything”, Lugansk regional governor Sergiy Gaiday said on Telegram.
‘Hold Russia accountable for Ukraine crimes’
The US and its allies vowed on Thursday to hold Russia accountable for crimes committed by its forces in Ukraine and gave strong support to investigations by the International Criminal Court, the United Nations and other bodies.
US undersecretary of state Uzra Zeya told a UN Security Council meeting on strengthening accountability and justice for violations of international law that in nearly 100 days the world has seen Russian forces bomb maternity hospitals, train stations, apartment buildings and homes and kill civilians cycling down the street.