Ukraine’s main cities were unusually quiet on Wednesday, Ukraine's independence day, after President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia could use the occasion to launch more missile attacks six months after the start of the invasion.
Authorities banned independence day celebrations over fears they could be targets.
In a speech marking 31 years since his country gained independence from the Moscow-controlled Soviet Union, Zelensky said Ukraine was "reborn" when Russia invaded in February this year.
"A new nation appeared in the world on 24 February at four in the morning,” he said. “It was not born, but reborn.”
Independence day comes exactly six months after Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine.
In 1991, Ukraine broke away from the Soviet Union after a failed putsch in Moscow, and an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians voted in a referendum to declare independence.
🇺🇦 On August 24, 1991, the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian SSR adopted the "Act on State Independence of #Ukraine" by the votes of 346 deputies at an extraordinary session.
— Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine - Ukrainian Parliament (@ua_parliament) August 24, 2022
At the end of the meeting, the opposition deputies sang the anthem of the Ukrainian Sich riflemen pic.twitter.com/bF6DHQz4Vl
'Fight to the end'
Speaking about Russia’s invasion, Zelensky called Ukraine “a nation that did not cry, scream or take fright. One that did not flee. Did not give up. And did not forget".
Speaking in front of Kyiv's central monument to independence, Zelensky vowed to recapture occupied areas of eastern Ukraine as well as the Crimean peninsula that was annexed by Russia in 2014.
"We don't care what army you have, we only care about our land. We will fight for it until the end," he said, adding that “for us Ukraine is the whole of Ukraine. All 25 regions, without any concession or compromise".
On Tuesday, Zelensky told representatives of about 60 countries and international organisations attending a virtual summit on Crimea that Ukraine would drive Russian forces out of the peninsula by any means necessary, without consulting other countries beforehand.
(with wires)
