President Volodymyr Zelensky, always adept at messaging, used his latest Independence Day speech on Saturday to drive home the idea that Ukraine is taking the fight to Russia, even as his troops struggle along the front line at home.
He said the video of the speech was filmed near the site where his troops began a cross-border offensive into Russian territory nearly three weeks ago that caught Moscow by surprise. It was prerecorded from what he described as a location along the Psel River, an area frequently targeted by Russian artillery.
“Whoever wished misery upon our land shall find it in their own home,” Mr. Zelensky said of the incursion, which has pushed into the Kursk region of southwestern Russia.
He called his military’s operation — which has come after two and a half years of Russia’s all-out, and brutal, invasion of Ukraine — a “boomerang for evil.”
The celebration on Saturday marks 33 years since Ukraine declared its independence from a crumbling Soviet Union.
Earlier in the war, Ukraine marked Independence Day by parading burned Russian armored vehicles along Kyiv’s central thoroughfare, Khreshchatyk Avenue, using the holiday to boost morale.
The Ukrainian counterattack into Russia that Mr. Zelensky celebrated this year has seized more than 490 square miles of territory and displaced tens of thousands of Russians from their homes, posing a domestic challenge for Moscow. But it has so far fallen short of a key goal: forcing Russia to divert troops from areas of fierce fighting inside Ukraine, where Ukrainian troops have been losing ground.
There have been few signs of Russian troop movements out of the Donbas region, the most hotly contested area. And the Ukrainian operation is fraught with risks. It has relied on troops drawn from defensive positions in the Donbas, even as Russia closes in on the city of Pokrovsk, a road and rail hub.
Ukraine has also begun a far smaller offensive on another section of the front, this time inside Ukraine, in the Kharkiv region.
This offensive began on Thursday and has reclaimed land — though less than a square mile of territory, according to the Ukrainian military. The claim could not be independently verified.
The thrust in Kharkiv seized an opportunity created when Russia moved a limited number of troops to deal with the Kursk incursion. Russia has diverted troops from the Northern Grouping of Forces, a unit that had been fighting there, according to an analysis of publicly available information by the Institute for the Study of War.
Elsewhere in Russia, Ukraine has also stepped up long-range strikes with exploding drones and missiles in recent weeks, sinking a Russian ferry in the Black Sea that a Ukrainian navy spokesman said was an important part of the fuel supply network for Russian troops in occupied areas. Ukraine also attacked a massive oil and aviation fuel tank farm in Russia’s Rostov region, setting a fire that is still burning.
On Saturday, the governor of Russia’s Voronezh region, south of Moscow, declared a state of emergency after a drone attack he said that Russian air defenses had intercepted, but that had started a fire from falling debris.
The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv has warned of a risk of a Russian missile attack on Ukraine on the country’s Independence Day.
Also on Saturday, Mr. Zelensky signed a law that could enable a ban on a Russian-aligned branch of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. Ukrainian officials say the Russian Orthodox Church is little more than an extension of the Russian government, with priests used for espionage and to spread propaganda.
Under the law, a committee would assess whether churches have ties to the Russian state and therefore should be banned. The law has drawn criticism from the Russian-affiliated church in Ukraine as an infringement on freedom of religion.
Read More: On Ukraine’s Independence Day, Zelensky Celebrates Push Into Russia
