Zelenskyj urges Ukrainians to stick together

With winter conditions bogging down military troops and leaving both sides looking for spring offensives, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky On Sunday he called on Ukrainians of all regions to stick together.

His comments came in a speech at the unity dayparty born to commemorate events that occurred more than a century ago, and whose meaning has acquired superior connotation after the Russian invasion.

Zelenskyy noted that since Russian forces crossed the border in late February, many Ukrainian fighters have found themselves defending their homeland far from their homes.

“We are all together no matter where we were born or raised,” she said.

“Say today: I will defend my Ukraine. My unity.”

For Zelensky, high-sounding rhetoric has become a vital tool both at home and abroad in his attempt to place war in the context of world democratic values and galvanize public opinion.

He met the former British prime minister on Sunday Boris Johnsonwhich helped garner support for Ukraine at the start of the conflict.

But his speech came just days after Ukraine suffered a setback in its campaign for more Western military support.

Ukraine hoped its European allies would provide Leopard 2 tanks German-made, but the Western military meeting in Germany said on Friday it had not reached an agreement.

To date, Germany has refused to ship Leopards from its stock or give formal approval to other countries that have them, such as Poland, to export the tanks to Ukraine.

However, he said he intends to start educating Ukrainians about its use and on Sunday the Polish military said it would do the same.

Some military officials have been looking for signs from Germany that it might agree to the transfer of the tanks, even if it doesn’t give formal approval.

In an interview on French television on Sunday, the German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbockhe suggested that his government would not object if the Poles sent them.

And on Sunday, the new chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, argued on ABC’s “This Week” that the United States should send at least an M1 Abrams -its best tank- to Ukraine to convince Germany to give the Leopards the green light.

“What I heard is that Germany is waiting for us to take the initiativeMcCaul said.

Neither Moscow nor Kiev have made much progress on the battlefield since early winter, although Russian military authorities say they have seized territory around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, which they sought to encircle and then capture in the midst of some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

The slowdown in the pace of territorial change came after the advance of Ukrainian forces in the autumn into the south and northeast of the country, which turned the momentum of the war in their favor.

The deputy head of Ukraine’s intelligence service said in an interview with a Ukrainian news site on Sunday that the coming months would likely be decisive.

“When we get past spring and early summer, maybe we can start talking about ending the war,” said the official, Vadym Skibitsky.

His comment echoed the view of Ukrainian military officers and analysts that a new phase of the war is approaching.

Despite the lack of recent progress on either side, the civilian population continues to pay a growing toll.

Authorities in Sumy, a region in northern Ukraine, said on Sunday that Russian forces across the border had fired dozens of shells into the town of Esman the day before, damaging dozens of homes and wounding a 17-year-old boy. .

In the province of MykolayivIn southern Ukraine, a car hit a landmine on Saturday, injuring four people, including a child.

And the Russian forces fired heavy artillery against the Nikopol district of Dnipropetrovsk province, Valentyn Reznichenko, head of the regional military administration, said on social messaging app Telegram.

One of the objectives of the next phase of the fighting may be Zaporizhia, a region of southern Ukraine that Russia illegally annexed in October.

In recent weeks, according to military experts, both sides have strengthened their positions in the region, including near the city of Orikhiv, which has been bombarded by Russian forces for months.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Lt. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said on Sunday that Russian forces had secured a more advantageous position in the province over the past day.

There has been no independent confirmation of his claims, reported by the state news agency Tass.

Colonel Yevhen Yerin, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Defense Forces, said on national television that small groups of Russian soldiers had attacked Ukrainian positions in Zaporizhzhia, but no large-scale fighting had taken place.

c.2023 The New York Times Society