President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said that a full-scale war has been going on for exactly eight months, and during this time the country has managed to defend its independence. He posted a video message on his Telegram channel.
“Today is exactly eight months of full-scale war. We have defended the independence of our state, and Russia cannot change this. We are liberating the Ukrainian land step by step. Donbass, Kharkiv, Kherson are now playing. But both the Zaporozhye region and the Crimea will sound: the time will come – and all of Ukraine will be free.”
The Ukrainian leader added that now the country is "breaking the so-called second army of the world." According to him, now Russia will only be a "beggar".
“Something is begging for something in Iran, trying to squeeze something out of Western states, inventing various nonsense about Ukraine. Russian potential is being spent on a war against our state and the entire free world.”
Zelensky noted that Russia had gas, military influence, political weight and ideological ambitions, but now they are replaced by isolation and disgust. He concluded that this is an important change, since the more potential Russia loses now, the more real freedom "the peoples near and within Russia" will have.
Earlier, Zelensky said that the Russian military was preparing a terrorist attack at the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station in the Kherson region, the dam could be mined. At the same time, Vladimir Saldo, appointed by Russia as the “acting governor of the Kherson region,” alsoargued that there was “an immediate danger of flooding the territories in connection with the planned destruction of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric dam.” Military experts told The Insider that blowing up the dam does not make any military sense for Ukraine, but they believe Russia could theoretically take this "crazy" step in an attempt to keep Kherson. The experts agreed that, most likely, the occupying authorities deliberately whipped up panic in order to force the local population to leave.