Zelenskyy: Russians are now preparing for defence, this is part two of the war

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that the Russians are switching to a defensive stance, and the second part of the war, in which Ukraine is going to seize the initiative, has started.

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

Quote: "I believe that every day, they [the Russians – ed.] will become weaker, and we will have more and more opportunities. They have already changed their tactics, they are already thinking about the defence of the territories they occupy. This is another wave of this war. This is a difficult wave for us as well.

We realise that their persistence on the battlefield, which was there at the beginning, has been broken by our forces; now they are digging in, making defensive lines. It will be difficult for us, it will be very challenging, but this is the second part now, in which we are going to take the initiative in this war."

Details: However, Zelenskyy noted that information leaks to the press "definitely don’t help" the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

"Sometimes there is information that comes out in one media outlet or another, and it’s not just the Russian media. This does not help. Will it stop us? No, not even if it happens every day. We will still go forward and we will certainly win... It doesn’t matter whether it [the information] is fake or true. All of it has an effect. And it’s definitely not helping. Everything else is minor obstacles, we’ll get past them," the president said.

Background: In the same interview, Zelenskyy stated that Ukraine is preparing for the 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 it with F-16 fighter jets, so the counteroffensive will have to start earlier.

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