War is “back” in Russia, which will “know what retaliation is,” Zelensky says

War is “back” in Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a speech broadcast Saturday, adding that Moscow, which attacked his country in 2022, “will learn what retaliation is.”

Russia wanted to “destroy us” but the war has “come home,” he said in a video to mark Ukraine's Independence Day, which he said was recorded in the border area from where kyiv launched its surprise incursion into Russia.

The Ukrainian president said he had released the video, which was shot in a deserted forest area in the Sumy region, which he visited earlier this week, saying it was “a few kilometers” from where Ukrainian forces launched their offensive.

kyiv “surprises once again,” Zelenky said, promising that Russia “will learn what retaliation is.”

A Ukrainian soldier after a night combat mission in Donbass on August 24, 2024 © AFP – Genya SAVILOV

By launching its invasion in the spring of 2022, “Russia sought only one thing: to destroy us. Instead, today we are celebrating the 33rd Independence Day of Ukraine,” he said continued.

The Ukrainian president added: “Whoever wants to sow evil on our land will reap the fruits on his own territory. This is neither a prediction, nor boasting, nor blind revenge. This is only justice.”

He called Russian President Vladimir Putin “a sick old man from Red Square who constantly threatens everyone with the red button.”

For several days, Moscow has been threatening a nuclear catastrophe in the event of an attack by the Ukrainian army on the Kursk nuclear power plant, located in the region where Kiev's forces have been conducting an offensive for the past two weeks.

Ukraine commemorates its independence from the Soviet Union on Saturday, as the war with Moscow drags on for a third year and that kyiv has launched, since August 6, thousands of its troops to attack the Russian border region of Kursk, seizing dozens of localities and several hundred square kilometers.

For their part, Russian troops continue to gain ground in eastern Ukraine, and claim to continue to inflict heavy losses on the Ukrainians and prevent their attempts to break through in depth.

Since the beginning of the Ukrainian offensive in Russia, more than 130,000 people have fled the fighting and shelling, according to the authorities of the Kursk region. At least 31 civilians have been killed and 143 injured, according to the state news agency TASS.

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