Zelenskiy touts new ‘drone missile’, calls Putin ‘sick old man’ By Reuters

By Tom Balmforth and Olena Harmash

KYIV (Reuters) -President Volodymyr Zelenskiy touted a newly developed Ukrainian “drone missile” on Saturday that he mentioned would take the battle again to Russia and scornfully derided Russia’s Vladimir Putin as a “sick outdated man from Purple Sq.”.

As Ukraine marked 33 years of post-Soviet independence, Zelenskiy mentioned the brand new weapon, Palianytsia, was sooner and extra highly effective than the domestically made drones that Kyiv has up to now used to struggle again towards Russia, putting its oil refineries and navy airfields.

“Our enemy will … know what the Ukrainian manner for retaliation is. Worthy, symmetrical, long-ranged,” he mentioned.

Zelenskiy mentioned the brand new class of Ukrainian weapon had been used for a profitable strike on a goal in Russia, however didn’t say the place.

He used derisive language to explain Russia’s 71-year-old president and the nuclear rhetoric popping out of Moscow.

“A sick outdated man from Purple Sq. who consistently threatens everybody with the purple button won’t dictate any of his purple strains to us,” he mentioned in a video on the Telegram messaging app.

Russia, which has attacked Ukraine with many hundreds of missiles and drones because it invaded in February 2022, has decried Ukraine’s drone assaults as terrorism. Moscow’s troops are advancing in Ukraine’s east and occupy 18% of the nation.

Zelenskiy has been urgent Kyiv’s allies to permit him to make use of Western weapons deeper in Russian territory reminiscent of to strike airbases utilized by Russian warplanes that pound Ukraine with missiles and glide bombs.

“I wish to stress as soon as extra that our new weapon selections, together with Palianytsia, is our reasonable strategy to act whereas a few of our companions are sadly delaying selections,” Zelenskiy instructed a information convention.

Ukrainians say the phrase “Palianytsia”, a kind of Ukrainian bread, is simply too tough to pronounce for Russians and it has been used – generally humorously – through the battle as a strategy to inform Ukrainians and Russians aside.

“Will probably be very tough for Russia, tough to even pronounce what precisely has hit it,” Zelenskiy mentioned of the drone missile.

TOP COMMANDER PROMOTED

In a decree, Zelenskiy promoted his prime commander, Colonel Common Oleksandr Syrskyi, to the rank of common, a tacit gesture of reward after Ukraine’s lightning cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk area launched on Aug. 6.

Forged by Russia as an escalation and main provocation, Ukraine’s incursion has captured greater than 90 settlements within the Kursk area in response to Kyiv, the largest invasion of Russia since World Warfare Two.

Talking at a joint information convention with Poland’s and Lithuania’s leaders, Zelenskiy instructed reporters the operation had partially been a preventive transfer to cease Russian plans to seize the northern metropolis of Sumy.

Aside from capturing prisoners of battle and making a “buffer zone”, Zelenskiy mentioned the operation had different targets that he couldn’t disclose publicly.

Independence Day has surged in significance for Ukrainians through the invasion, which has spurred widespread patriotic sentiment.

This 12 months the general public vacation came about after the U.S. and German embassies issued warnings of a heightened threat of Russian missile and drone assaults throughout the nation.

There had been no main strikes as of 1800 native time, however the air raid siren sounded in Kyiv late afternoon.

To mark the date, Zelenskiy ratified the Rome Statute, paving the way in which for Ukraine to hitch the Worldwide Legal Court docket, one in every of many steps wanted to hitch the European Union, accession to which Kyiv sees as a precedence.

He additionally signed laws banning the actions of spiritual teams linked to Russia, making a authorized instrument for the federal government to ban a department of the Orthodox Church seen as linked to Russia.

Ukraine and Russia additionally mentioned they’d every secured the discharge of 115 prisoners of battle in an alternate. The Russian Defence Ministry mentioned its freed servicemen had been captured throughout Ukraine’s assault within the Kursk area.