Volodymyr Zelenskyy has mocked Russia’s military drive, saying the Kremlin has set and put off 15 deadlines to capture Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region across four years. The Ukrainian president was responding to Vladimir Putin’s rejection a day earlier of what the Russian leader said was a Ukrainian proposal to abandon long-range strikes and scale down the fighting. He said Putin’s comments showed he was out of touch with the feelings of Russians who faced queues at petrol stations, linked to a Ukrainian campaign of strikes on oil industry targets. “Even an oil-producing state – a ‘gas station’ as Russia has often been called – is now facing fuel shortages,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Monday. “This is a direct consequence of the war; one of many consequences. It is also one example of how Ukraine responds – with precision, not through terrorism.”
Zelenskyy also said the Kremlin had set – and later put back – 15 deadlines over the course of more than four years to capture four regions in eastern Ukraine: Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas, and Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. “Russia’s political leadership remains obsessed with Donbas,” he said. “If Russia does not end the war, it will have to postpone that deadline once again.” Putin on Sunday said Russian forces would press ahead with their battlefield aim of fully capturing the four regions.
