After 155 days of the war, Ukraine will not rest until it has liberated all of its lands from the Russian invaders. The Ukrainian counteroffensive against the Russian-controlled Kherson in southern Ukraine is gaining momentum. This morning, Russian forces launched a large-scale missile attack on Ukraine from Belarusian territory.
Ukraine is over a thousand years old, but it is only this year that the country celebrates its statehood for the first time. This celebration was established by Presidential Decree on August 24 last year for July 28, the day previously established for the Baptism of Kievan Rus-Ukraine.
“Today, we defend our statehood, arms in hand. 155 days in a row. So you can say that for us, Statehood Day is every day. All stages of the history of Ukraine’s statehood, its defence and its struggle for it can be described in one sentence: we were, we are, and we will be! We will be there because our country has remarkable sons and daughters who stood up for it! Ukrainians do not know the word ‘captivity’ and will fight for their statehood until the last breath, the last bullet and the last soldier. We will live to fight and fight to live,” Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine, said.
Russian forces fired 25 missiles from the territory of Belarus. Six cruise missiles were launched from the Black Sea. Most of them were shot down. The infrastructure in the Vyshgorod and Bukiv regions near Kyiv and the villages in the Chernihiv, Krivoy and Dnepropetrovsk districts were damaged. Residential buildings and civil infrastructure were destroyed in the cities of Chuhuiv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv and Toretsk. Five people were killed and 25 injured in the shelling of the town of Kropyvnytskyi.