Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Valery Zaluzhny said that the Ukrainian army managed to take away the strategic initiative from the invaders.
He stated this at a meeting of the NATO Military Committee at the level of commanders-in-chief in the format with Ukraine, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reports.
"We managed to take away the strategic initiative from the enemy, inflict critical losses, force them to abandon the main goal - the capture of the city of Kyiv. Today we are not only defending. We have carried out a number of successful counter-offensive actions. We managed to unblock Kharkiv and Mykolaiv; battles are underway in the Kherson direction", - said Zaluzhny.
"If our grandfathers who fought in the Second World War were alive, they would cry seeing what is happening in Ukraine. The Nazi methods have not changed. This is the total destruction of civilian facilities and the killing of civilians. This is a humanitarian disaster: the humanitarian goods supply impeding. The enemy clearly realizes and understands what he is committing. Intercepted conversations of the Russian military command confirm that they did all that consciously. The whole world knows what are Bucha, Hostomel, and Borodyanka. This is enormous grief in the 21st century in the very heart of Europe."
"I could not fail to mention the defenders of Mariupol, who, via their heroic deeds, restrained the enemy's many thousandth formations and allowed us to equip the defensive lines in other directions." - said Zaluzhny.
The Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs stated the beginning of the third decisive phase of the war. According to Aleksey Reznikov, the Armed Forces of Ukraine should rely on their own forces for the next weeks, until the heavy weapons supplied by the West equalize forces on the front.
