Photo: PAVLO BAGMUT/NURPHOTO/IMAGO / copyright
In a speech addressed to the Parliament of Luxembourg, Zelensky put the figure at close to 125,000 square kilometers the territory occupied by the invading troops. “This is a much larger area than the Benelux countries,” he warned.
Despite the fact that the Russian Army has withdrawn from a third of the places busy, “near 300,000 square kilometers are mined”, warned the Ukrainian president. Zelensky recalled that the current war dates back to 2014, when Russia occupied the Crimean peninsula and part of the Donbas region, to the east of Ukraine, where the self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk are located. “There were very bloody phases”, he explained, to which he added that 14,000 Ukrainians have since died and that more than 1.5 million people have become internally displaced as consequence of the conflict.
Seventh package of measures
Since 24 February, according to Zelensky, “Russia has shown that its cruelty is much greater.” Thus, he has pointed out that Ukraine has to defend itself against the Russian Army because “all Russian military units participate in this aggression”.
The president has once again requested defense support, after thanking the sanctions to put pressure on Putin. “We need more weapons for Ukraine, modern weapons that ensure the superiority of our State against Russia in this war”, he insisted.
For this reason, he has encouraged the preparation of a seventh package of sanctions by the European Union that aims to punish officials and judges who “work for repression and war”. Currently, the sixth package has been agreed upon, but it still needs to be approved and put into operation. This latest set of sanctions has been delayed in recent weeks by negotiations to include a partial embargo on Russian oil.