By Tom Balmforth and Olena Harmash
KYIV (Reuters) -President Volodymyr Zelenskiy touted a newly developed Ukrainian “drone missile” on Saturday that he stated would take the conflict again to Russia and scornfully derided Russia’s Vladimir Putin as a “sick outdated man from Purple Sq.”.
As Ukraine marked 33 years of post-Soviet independence, Zelenskiy stated the brand new weapon, Palianytsia, was quicker and extra highly effective than the domestically made drones that Kyiv has to date used to struggle again in opposition to Russia, hanging its oil refineries and army airfields.
“Our enemy will … know what the Ukrainian method for retaliation is. Worthy, symmetrical, long-ranged,” he stated.
Zelenskiy stated 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“A sick outdated man from Purple Sq. who continually threatens everybody with the pink button won’t dictate any of his pink traces to us,” he stated 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 reminiscent of to strike airbases utilized by Russian warplanes that pound Ukraine with missiles and glide bombs.
“I wish to stress as soon as extra that our new weapon choices, together with Palianytsia, is our sensible technique to act whereas a few of our companions are sadly delaying choices,” 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 technique to inform Ukrainians and Russians aside.
“Will probably be very tough for Russia, tough to even pronounce what precisely has hit it,” Zelenskiy stated of the drone missile.
TOP COMMANDER PROMOTED
In a decree, Zelenskiy promoted his prime commander, Colonel Common Oleksandr Syrskyi, to the rank of normal, a tacit gesture of reward after Ukraine’s lightning cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk area launched on Aug. 6.
Solid by Russia as an escalation and main provocation, Ukraine’s incursion has captured greater than 90 settlements within the Kursk area in accordance with Kyiv, the largest invasion of Russia since World Battle Two.
Talking at a joint information convention with Poland’s and Lithuania’s leaders, Zelenskiy instructed reporters the operation had partly 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 stated the operation had different goals that he couldn’t disclose publicly.
Independence Day has surged in significance for Ukrainians throughout the invasion, which has spurred widespread patriotic sentiment.
This 12 months the general public vacation occurred after the U.S. and German embassies issued warnings of a heightened threat of Russian missile and drone assaults throughout the nation.
There had been no main strikes as of 1800 native time, however the air raid siren sounded in Kyiv late afternoon.
To mark the date, Zelenskiy ratified the Rome Statute, paving the best way for Ukraine to hitch the Worldwide Prison Courtroom, one among 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 stated that they had every secured the discharge of 115 prisoners of conflict in an change. The Russian Defence Ministry stated its freed servicemen had been captured throughout Ukraine’s assault within the Kursk area.
(Reporting by Olena Harmash and Tom Balmforth; Modifying by Hugh Lawson)
