President Volodymyr Zelensky, always adept at messaging, used his latest Independence Day speech on Saturday to drive home the idea that Ukraine is taking the fight to Russia, even as his troops struggle along the front line at home.
He said the video of the speech was filmed near the site where his troops began a cross-border offensive into Russian territory nearly three weeks ago that caught Moscow by surprise. It was prerecorded from what he described as a location along the Psel River, an area frequently targeted by Russian artillery.
“Whoever wished misery upon our land shall find it in their own home,” Mr. Zelensky said of the incursion, which has pushed into the Kursk region of southwestern Russia.
He called his military’s operation — which has come after two and a half years of Russia’s all-out, and brutal, invasion of Ukraine — a “boomerang for evil.”
The celebration on Saturday marks 33 years since Ukraine declared its independence from a crumbling Soviet Union.
Earlier in the war, Ukraine marked Independence Day by parading burned Russian armored vehicles along Kyiv’s central thoroughfare, Khreshchatyk Avenue, using the holiday to boost morale.
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