Russia’s 'strategic defeat' is already obvious to everyone in world, says Zelenskyy

After two and a half months since Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday, May 13 emphasized that the strategic defeat of Russia is "obvious." Moscow's defeat was "obvious to everyone in the world and also to those who still communicate with them (the Russians)," said Zelenskyy in his daily video message.

"Only Russia does not have the courage to admit defeat," he asserted. Further in the recorded message, Zelenskyy said that Russians are cowards, as they have been "trying to hide this truth." He accused Moscow of falsifying the facts behind new rocket, air and artillery attacks across several Ukrainian towns and villages. 

Zelenskyy derides Russian attack targetting school in Chernihiv

Ukraine's leader lambasted Russian leadership for humanitarian crisis and attacks on the civilians. He condemned the recent Russian attacks that targetted a school in Chernihiv in the north where civilians had taken refuge in the bomb shelter. "Of course, the Russian state is in a state where any education only hinders it," Zelenskyy said. He continued that the Russian commanders gave such orders to shell educational institutions. Ukraine's President said that all the hospitals that the Russian forces destroyed, all the schools, all the universities that they bombed, all the houses, bridges, businesses that have been destructed, "Ukraine will rebuild everything."

Zelenskyy labelled Russia's assaults on the Ukrainians as "simply sick and incurable." He informed, that Russia has bombarded at least 570 health facilities in Ukraine, a claim confirmed by WHO and dismissed by Kremlin. 

"What's the point?" Zelenskyy asked. "That's nonsense, that's barbarism." For him, this is a sign of the self-destruction of Russia, which the world once viewed as a cultural nation." 

"The occupiers struck today at the Poltava region, at Kremenchuk. Again at the plant, so that people do not have fuel. Really sick. At the Zaporizhzhia region, at the cities and villages of Donbas. But what does it give them?"

On the International Nurses Day celebrated on May 12, Zelenskyy also thanked all the nurses, all the medical workers who he said helped the Ukrainians fight "every day and every night" against Russia's barbaric troops. "And today I urge everyone who has not yet thanked them to do so," he said in a recorded video. Ukraine's leader lamented eight years of war in Donbas, two years of pandemic, the third month of full-scale war, saying that medics' have dedicated their lives to the civilians. "They dedicate to you, us, everyone - society. So that Ukraine lives," he iterated.