It is not about a forecastnot even a optimistic omen in a war whose outcome is still far away. But the president of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenskyhas promised to dedicate all possible efforts to achieve “this year” that has just begun a victory on the Russian occupier, in his speech on the occasion of the first anniversary of the start of the war. Highlighting the role played by every citizen over the past 12 months in stopping and repelling invading forces, the ukrainian head of state He wanted to highlight the importance that the authorities of his country attach to the individual, as opposed to what happens beyond his eastern borderwhere, in his opinion, human life is expendable according to the designs of the Government and the president to satisfy the desire for expansion of the State.
“We will do everything possible to win this year,” the Ukrainian leader blurted out during a morning message addressed to the public. Dressed in black as a sign of mourning for the deceased, from the same place where he announced the start of the invasion exactly 365 days ago, Zelensky recalled the message of “67 seconds” who then addressed the nation around seven in the morning. The declaration contained “two most important things, then and now: that Russia had started a total war against us, and that we are strong, that we are ready for anything, that we will win, because we are Ukraine,” he proclaimed in a sober but firm tone. He February 24, 2022 It is for the Ukrainians “the longest day of our lives, the hardest day in our history,” Zelensky emphasized, before committing himself to “inflicting the punishment they deserve on the Russian murderers, the punishment of a international court“. “We have no doubt that they will face their responsibilities,” he predicted, recalling the high price that citizens are paying: “every Ukrainian has lost someone close to them.”
The president of the Slavic country wanted to dedicate a special mention to cities like irpin, bucha, Mariupol, Khersonwhere the invading troops have been accused of committing serious crimes against humanity. These towns, in the words of the leader, are “hero cities, the capitals of invincibility.” Zelensky has placed special emphasis on the idea that Ukraine “has surprised the world”, “inspired” it and “united” it. “There are thousands of words to underline it”, he wanted to highlight.
value of the individual
According to Yevhen FedchenkoUkrainian analyst, journalist and director of StopFake, a web page that fights against disinformation from the neighboring country, two are the main ideas around which the presidential intervention has revolved. “He has focused his speech on the ordinary people, the crucial role that each individual citizen plays in this combat; this is the opposite of what happens in Russia, where the Government and the State are much more important than the individual and where Vladimir Putin is willing to sacrifice as many people as he wants in exchange for nothing”, the expert assessed, in a clear allusion to the military tactics of the Russian Army denounced by kyiv, which consist of launching waves of people to the front waiting for them to exhaust the capacity of the Ukrainian forces to repel them.
Another aspect of the discourse highlighted by the ukrainian journalist It is the mention of the support received from abroad, and of the substantial changes in the perception of the Russian Federation that the Ukrainian resistance to the invasion has caused. According to Fedchenko, the head of state wanted highlight that “the Ukrainian struggle has completely changed the attitude of the world towards the Ukrainian cause: first it was thought that Ukraine would lose, and instead it began to win, which attracted a lot of support and allowed the formation of a strong coalition, and expanded the idea of that Russia should and will lose, a concept that was unacceptable in world politics before the war”.
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The first anniversary of start of the war in Ukraine has lived anxiously In most of the cities and towns of the Slavic country, although fears of indiscriminate attacks against civilian targets or electrical infrastructures, a constant a few months ago, have finally not occurred. In it lugansk fronta former member of the US Special Forces who had gone to Ukraine to fight as a volunteer and who refused to give his full name insisted that, “deep down” February 24 “for Putin is a day like any other”, and that it made no sense wasting weapons and ammunition with symbolic attacks that have little translation in the correlation of forces and the battlefield. Many analysts agree that, after 12 months of intense fighting, both sides need to replenish their arms stocks, Ukraine from the West and Russia from Iran, one of their few remaining allies. He western blocwith the US in the lead, carefully observes any possible movement of China to send weapons to Russia.
Zelensky himself has alluded to efforts to prevent Beijing from finally handing over weapons to Moscow. He has been at a press conference for foreign journalists in which he has announced that he is ‘planning to meet with Xi Jinping” to join China in the efforts to achieve a cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of Russian troops from the country. “China respects the territorial integrity” of the countries and “therefore must do everything possible to remove Russia from our territory”, he added in reference to the peace plan that Beijing unveiled this Friday.