Kiev, Jun. 19, (dpa/GNA) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has promised to retake areas of southern Ukraine occupied by Russian troops.
“We will not hand over the south to anyone,” Zelensky said in an overnight video address, shortly after returning from a visit to the southern front lines on Saturday. He vowed to take back “everything that belongs to us.”
Ukraine will also restore safe access to the sea in the process, he said.
Zelensky also vowed that Ukraine would do everything to resume food exports from its ports as soon as this can be done safely with international help.
Russian troops captured large parts of southern Ukraine shortly after the war began. During their advance, they conquered the entire Ukrainian coast on the Sea of Azov and parts of the Ukrainian Black Sea coast.
Russia had already annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014.
A Russian commander had declared in April that he wanted to bring all of southern Ukraine under Russian control up to the disputed region of Transnistria in neighbouring Moldova.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson separately warned on Sunday that the war in Ukraine will not be over soon.
“We must prepare ourselves for the fact that it could last years,” Stoltenberg told Germany’s Bild am Sonntag tabloid.
Writing in The Times newspaper – shortly after a visit to Kiev – Johnson said: “I am afraid that we need to steel ourselves for a long war, as Putin resorts to a campaign of attrition, trying to grind down Ukraine by sheer brutality.”
GNA
PDC