Zelenskyy on possible losses during liberation of Crimea: Russia is greatly weakened

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is convinced that Russia has been greatly weakened in its year-long war with Ukraine, so the prospects of Ukraine suffering great losses of manpower during the liberation of Crimea have changed significantly. 

Source: Zelenskyy in an interview to Finnish, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian journalists

Details: Zelenskyy was reminded of his statement made on 23 May 2022, where he said that the liberation of Crimea by military means could cost Ukraine hundreds of thousands of soldiers' lives. He was asked how many lives he was willing to give for the liberation of Crimea now.

Quote from Zelenskyy: "Russia has become much weaker since then. They have lost a large amount of powerful manpower - professional soldiers, not mobilised men. All the figures produced by the analytics of all states regarding their number of real military manpower, coherence and training, were overstated. They are a great power, and they have many different weapons, but psychologically much has changed since that moment. We saw this during the Kherson operation.

They are afraid, they are afraid of dying. I think their spirit has been broken. They don’t understand how this happened: ‘We reached Kyiv, just two or three more days and it will be over…’ They were psychologically broken. The situation is very different from last year's. So it could be different in relation to Crimea."

Earlier: In the same interview Zelenskyy stated that Ukraine is preparing for a counteroffensive, but weapons are needed to preserve more lives. At the same time, he believes that Ukraine cannot delay the campaign to liberate its territories until its partners have provided F-16 fighter jets, so the counteroffensive will have to begin earlier.

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