Ukraine’s victory in the war against Russia will be “inevitable” if Western countries, which have already started to deliver heavy tanks, continue to help, President Volodimir Zelensky said on Friday at the first anniversary of the invasion of your country.
“If our partners keep their word and respect the deadlines, an inevitable victory awaits us (…). I really want it to be this year,” Zelensky told a news conference in kyiv.
Poland announced that it had already sent four Leopard 2 heavy tanks to Ukraine and promised to send 60 Polish PT-91 tanks “very soon”.
Sweden indicated that it will deliver “approximately” ten Leopards and Germany announced the shipment of another four, in addition to the fourteen already planned to reinforce the Ukrainian resistance.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov has promised a general counter-offensive as fierce fighting rages in the east. “We will strike harder and from greater distances, by air, land, sea and in cyberspace,” he said.
More sanctions
Russian troops entered Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Currently many Ukrainian cities are in ruins, a part of the country lives under Russian occupation and the balance of dead and wounded on each side it exceeds 150,000, according to Western estimates.
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, affirmed that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, “did not achieve a single one” of his objectives in a year of war.
“Instead of wiping Ukraine off the map, it is facing a nation stronger than ever,” he said in Tallinn, the Estonian capital.
Russia was betting on a quick victory that would keep Ukraine within its sphere of influence, but now seems to limit its ambitions to recognizing the annexation of four breakaway areas in the east. Even so, the former president and number two of the Russian Security Council, Dmitri Medvedev, said he was sure of “victory” and proclaimed that Russian troops are willing to reach “up to the borders of Poland.”
The United States announced new sanctions against Russiato sectors such as banking and the defense industry, to limit Moscow’s access to strategic technology.
The EU also approved its 10th round of sanctions, which provide for “restrictions against individuals or entities that support war, spread propaganda or supply Russia with drones used in war.”
And the G7 of the world’s most advanced economies threatened countries that help Russia evade sanctions with “heavy costs.”
In Berlin, protesters placed the remains of a Russian tank in front of the Moscow embassy, as a “symbol of the fall of Russia.”
In London, a minute’s silence was held in front of the Russian embassy in the presence of British MPs and diplomats.
Ukrainians also paid tribute to their dead. A photographic exhibition in Bucha recalled the horror experienced by this city located on the northwest outskirts of kyiv.