KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A somber atmosphere pervades Ukraine’s 33rd Independence Day Saturday, as the nation’s war against Russia’s aggression reaches a 30-month milestone. No fireworks, parades or concerts are planned and instead Ukrainians will mark the day with commemorations for civilians and soldiers killed in the war.
Ukrainians have flooded social media with messages of gratitude and support, greeting each other and thanking the soldiers on the front lines. In the outpouring of unity, there’s a shared acknowledgment that the two-and-a-half years have been tough, with fatigue increasingly setting in.
“Independence is the silence we experience when we lose our people,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said to the nation. “Independence descends into the shelter during an air raid, only to endure and rise again and again to tell the enemy: You will achieve nothing.”
Zelenskyy pointed out that the war started by Russia has now spread to its own territory. “Those who seek to sow evil on our land will reap its fruits on their own soil,” he said, referring to Ukraine’s incursion earlier this month into Russia’s Kursk region.
The president symbolically chose to record his address in the northeastern town of Sumy, just a few kilometers (miles) from the Russian border, where Ukrainian forces crossed into Russia on August 6.
“913 days ago, Russia launched its war against us, partly through Sumy region,” Zelenskyy said. “They violated not only sovereign borders but also the boundaries of cruelty and common sense, driven by an insatiable desire to destroy us.”
Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, gave the war a startling turn, adding a new front to the conflict to counter Russia’s grinding advances in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Ukraine quickly seized considerable Russian territory, including scores of small towns, and captured hundreds of Russian soldiers, moves that may influence the war’s trajectory.
“And those who sought to turn our lands into a buffer zone should now worry that their own country doesn’t become a buffer federation,” he said. “This is how independence responds.”
Ukraine’s military claims to hold 1,200 square kilometers (480 square miles) of Russian territory in Kursk, and in the past week it has also launched drone attacks that have struck strategic bridges and Russian airfields and drone bases.
Even as Ukraine presses its offensive into Russia, however, it is also evacuating residents from Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine, as Russian forces are now 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the strategic city.
Residents of Pokrovsk, once a city of 60,000, on Friday registered for evacuation at a central school and then, carrying bundles of belongings, boarded trains to take them to areas further from the conflict.
Also on Friday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the capital, Kyiv. After hugging Zelenskyy, Modi offered “as a friend” to help bring peace to Ukraine. The Indian leader’s visit, although brief, raised hopes among many in the war-battered country that he will help pave the way for an Indian role in peace mediation.