By Tom Balmforth and Olena Harmash
KYIV (Reuters) -President Volodymyr Zelenskiy touted a newly developed Ukrainian “drone missile” on Saturday that he mentioned would take the conflict again to Russia and scornfully derided Russia’s Vladimir Putin as a “sick old man from Red Square”.
As Ukraine marked 33 years of post-Soviet independence, Zelenskiy mentioned the brand new weapon, Palianytsia, was sooner and extra highly effective than the domestically made drones that Kyiv has to date used to battle again in opposition to Russia, placing its oil refineries and army airfields.
“Our enemy will … know what the Ukrainian way for retaliation is. Worthy, symmetrical, long-ranged,” he mentioned.
Zelenskiy mentioned the brand new class of Ukrainian weapon had been used for a profitable strike on a goal in Russia, however didn’t say the place.
He used derisive language to explain Russia’s 71-year-old president and the nuclear rhetoric popping out of Moscow.
“A sick old man from Red Square who constantly threatens everyone with the red button will not dictate any of his red lines to us,” he mentioned in a video on the Telegram messaging app.
Russia, which has attacked Ukraine with many 1000’s of missiles and drones because it invaded in February 2022, has decried Ukraine’s drone assaults as terrorism. Moscow’s troops are advancing in Ukraine’s east and occupy 18% of the nation.
Zelenskiy has been urgent Kyiv’s allies to permit him to make use of Western weapons deeper in Russian territory comparable to to strike airbases utilized by Russian warplanes that pound Ukraine with missiles and glide bombs.
“I want to stress once more that our new weapon decisions, including Palianytsia, is our realistic way to act while some of our partners are unfortunately delaying decisions,” Zelenskiy instructed a information convention.
Ukrainians say the phrase “Palianytsia”, a kind of Ukrainian bread, is simply too tough to pronounce for Russians and it has been used – typically humorously – throughout the conflict as a approach to inform Ukrainians and Russians aside.
“It will be very difficult for Russia, difficult to even pronounce what exactly has hit it,” Zelenskiy mentioned of the drone missile.
TOP COMMANDER PROMOTED
In a decree, Zelenskiy promoted his prime commander, Colonel Basic Oleksandr Syrskyi, to the rank of basic, a tacit gesture of reward after Ukraine’s lightning cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk area launched on Aug. 6.
Slammed by Russia as an escalation and main provocation, Ukraine’s incursion has captured greater than 90 settlements within the Kursk area in response to Kyiv, the largest invasion of Russia since World Struggle Two.
Talking at a joint information convention with Poland’s and Lithuania’s leaders, Zelenskiy instructed reporters the operation had partially been a preventive transfer to cease Russian plans to seize the northern metropolis of Sumy.
Aside from capturing prisoners of conflict and making a “buffer zone”, Zelenskiy mentioned the operation had different targets that he couldn’t disclose publicly.
Polish president Andrzej Duda confirmed that Polish PT-91 Twardy tanks given to Kyiv by Warsaw have been collaborating within the preventing in Kursk area.
“We are touched to see how the PT-91 Twardy tanks, given by Poland (to Ukraine) more than one year ago, are defending today Ukraine on the battlefields, fighting in the Kursk region,” he mentioned.
Russia has strongly condemned the usage of western weapons for the incursion, which Putin has mentioned will obtain a “worthy response”.
Independence Day has surged in significance for Ukrainians throughout the invasion, which has spurred widespread patriotic sentiment.
This 12 months the general public vacation passed off after the U.S. and German embassies issued warnings of a heightened danger of Russian missile and drone assaults throughout the nation.
There had been no main strikes as of 2200 native time, however the air raid siren sounded not less than twice in Kyiv over the afternoon and night.
To mark the date, Zelenskiy ratified the Rome Statute, paving the way in which for Ukraine to hitch the Worldwide Prison Court docket, certainly one of many steps wanted to hitch the European Union, accession to which Kyiv sees as a precedence.
He additionally signed laws banning the actions of non secular teams linked to Russia, making a authorized instrument for the federal government to ban a department of the Orthodox Church seen as linked to Russia.
Ukraine and Russia additionally mentioned they’d every secured the discharge of 115 prisoners of conflict in an change. The Russian Defence Ministry mentioned its freed servicemen had been captured throughout Ukraine’s assault within the Kursk area.
