Three days after the reconquest of the city at the end of a dazzling counter-offensive, the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, went on Wednesday, September 14, to Izioum. Hand on heart while singing the Ukrainian national anthem, he attended the raising of the flag on the charred building of the town hall. ” I want to thank you, Zelensky told soldiers who liberated Izium and the Kharkiv region after six months of Russian military occupation, for saving our people, our hearts, our children and our future. »
This is the fifth visit outside kyiv of the Ukrainian president, who communicates mainly with his fellow citizens, since the outbreak of the war on February 24, by a video message posted each evening on social networks. After Boucha (4 April), to mark the five weeks of fierce resistance in the Ukrainian capital and to honor the victims of war crimes perpetrated by the Russian army in the occupied suburbs, after Kharkiv (29 May), where a counter-offensive Ukraine recorded its first limited successes, after the Donbass fronts of Lyssytchansk and Soledar (June 5), at one of the harshest moments of the conflict, as well as in Zaporizhia to visit the refugees from conquered Mariupol, after Odessa and Mykolaiv (June 18), in this strategic south for Ukraine, Wednesday’s visit to Kharkiv and Izium is of a different nature: it marks the first dazzling military victory for the Ukrainian army.
In six days, from September 6 to 11, the Russian army was decimated in places, and in others had to flee in haste. For Moscow, it is another bitter failure after its defeat around kyiv and its inability to overthrow Mr. Zelensky and his government, as well as its initial setbacks around Kharkiv, but with the addition, this time, of a wind of panic which allowed the Ukrainian forces to conquer thousands of square kilometres, to kill or take prisoner at least hundreds of Russian soldiers, and to capture tanks and armored vehicles, anti-aircraft guns, systems of radio-electronic warfare, as well as cases of shells and ammunition in large quantities. A wind of panic such as it this time had an echo as far as Moscow, including on public television channels which are nevertheless tightly controlled.
“The Ukrainian flag will return everywhere in the country”
The visit of Volodymyr Zelensky, in the company of General Oleksandr Syrsky who, after having organized the defense of kyiv, was the mastermind behind this lightning counter-offensive, was first intended to honor the Ukrainian fighters. The latter pay an even higher price than civilians in the face of Russian aggression, with hundreds of casualties a day during the worst episodes of the war. After naming each regiment engaged in battle and honoring the soldiers who died in the fire, Mr. Zelensky said: “We are only moving in one direction, forward, towards victory! »
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