“Russia has approved an offensive against Ukraine“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an 11-minute video message to the nation on Telegram.
There Russia has concentrated “nearly 200,000 troops” as well as “thousands of combat vehicles” at the border, Zelensky said. “Nearly 200,000 troops are deployed, thousands of combat vehicles.”
The Ukrainian president unsuccessfully asked Vladimir Putin for a telephone interview. “I took the initiative today for a telephone conversation with the President of the Russian Federation. The result: silence,” said Zelensky.
“The Ukrainians don’t want war, the authorities don’t want war, but if we are attacked we will defend ourselves,” he said in his speech to the nation, in which he spoke first in Ukrainian and then switched to Russian.
Russians and Ukrainians are different “but it is not a reason to be enemies”, he stressed to the Russian people.
The Ukrainian president said that Russia could start a “great war in Europe” in the next few days. A Russian invasion of Ukraine could begin “overnight”, with the risk of “becoming the beginning of a great war in Europe,” Zelensky warned in his speech to the nation, addressing the Russian people in Russian.
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