Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky paid a surprise visit to the city of Izium on Wednesday, retaken on Saturday by Kyiv forces during their lightning counter-offensive in the Northeast.
The Russian military abandoned its main stronghold in northeastern Ukraine on Saturday, leaving behind crates of abandoned ammunition and equipment, in its most severe setback since the failed offensive on the capital, Kyiv, last March.
“It is probably possible to temporarily occupy the territory of our state. But it is definitely impossible to occupy our people, the Ukrainian people”said Volodimir Zelensky.
The Ukrainian flag was hoisted in front of the charred town hall of Izium. “HASEarlier, when we looked up, we were always looking for the blue sky, the sun. And today we, and especially the inhabitants of the temporarily occupied territories, looking up, are looking for only one thing – the flag of our state. It means the heroes are here. It means the enemy is gone, he has fled“, he added.
4.000 km2 reconquered
The Ukrainian president compared the devastation he had seen in Izium, which had a pre-war population of around 50,000, to that of Butcha, the town on the outskirts of Kyiv where Ukraine and its Western allies accuse the Russian army of a massacre of civilians, which Moscow denies.
“It’s not a shock for me (…) because we saw the same scenes as in Boutcha. The same buildings destroyed and the same people killed”a dit Volodimir Zelensky.
The president announced the day before that Ukraine fully controls more than 4,000 km2 of the territories it has taken back from Russian forces and is stabilizing some 4,000 km2 additional territories.