Zelensky vows to “retaliate” against Russia

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi vowed on Saturday to “retaliate” for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and signed a law banning the Moscow-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

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Thanks to mediation by the United Arab Emirates, Moscow and Kiev announced an exchange of 230 prisoners of war, 115 for each side.

On August 6, Ukrainian forces took the fight to their enemy’s soil by launching an unprecedented offensive in the Russian border region of Kursk. As Russian troops continue to advance in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass, they have captured dozens of locations there.

Russia wanted to “destroy us” but the war had “come home”, Mr Zelensky told his comrades in a video recorded in a forest on the Sumy border, from where Kiev launched his surprise attack on Russia.

Kyiv is “surprised once again,” said Mr. Zelenky said, promising that “Russia will know what retaliation is.”

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin met with Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimo. According to the Kremlin, they discussed “the struggle against the enemy forces occupying the Kursk region and the measures taken to destroy them.”

These terms contradict previous reports of curtailing Ukrainian activity.

Prisoners of war were released

Despite these wartime declarations, Russia and Ukraine announced a new prisoner exchange involving 230 people, including soldiers captured during the surprise Kursk offensive.

According to Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Commissioner for Human Rights, 82 of the 115 people rescued by Kyiv were soldiers who participated in the defense of the Azovstal factory during the siege of Mariupol in 2022, a major weapons facility in Ukraine.

Ukraine claims it captured “hundreds” of Russian soldiers, including conscripts and border guards, during its operation on Russian soil, while thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are still being held by Russia.

As in previous exchanges, Saturday’s mediation was thanked by the United Arab Emirates, which hailed itself as “a credible mediator” and called for “escalation” as “the only way to resolve the conflict.”

At official independence celebrations in Kyiv’s Hagia Sophia Square on Saturday, Mr. Zelensky participated with two of his country’s main supporters.

Photo by AFP

He confirmed on this occasion that Ukrainian forces have successfully tested a new “missile drone” called “Palanitsya” which is more powerful than the drones they currently have.

Mr. Zelensky signed a law banning the Moscow Patriarchate’s branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which has long been the country’s main sect.

The branch cut ties with Moscow in 2022, but Ukrainian authorities still consider it to be under Russian influence and have stepped up legal action against it, leading to the jailing of dozens of priests.

Although the church has lost influence in the face of the new independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church established in 2018, it still maintains thousands of parishes across the country.

“Ukrainian Orthodox today take a step to free themselves from the demons of Moscow,” promised Volodymyr Zelensky.

At the gates of Pokrovsky

While the Ukrainian military offensive launched on Aug. 6 in the Russian region of Kursk has received much attention, it has given the attackers animosity on their soil, and the center of the fighting is in the Ukrainian industrial region of Donbass (east), where the Russian military has an advantage.

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Photo by AFP

Russian forces are particularly close to Pokrovsk, an important logistics hub and a city of about 53,000 people, which authorities called for an urgent evacuation. They were 10 km from this town on Friday.

In another large city in the region, Kostiantynivka, a Russian strike on residential areas killed five people and wounded five others on Saturday, the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office said.

Kyiv also said it had hit an ammunition depot in Russia’s western Voronezh region. Local Russian officials reported drone strikes and the evacuation of a village.

Photo by AFP

Ukrainian officials said their offensive in Russia was aimed at creating a “buffer zone” against the bombing, forcing Moscow into “reasonable” negotiations and pushing the Russian military to redeploy troops from other parts of the front.

However, the Ukrainian offensive does not appear to have slowed Russian advances in eastern Ukraine, where Moscow’s forces seized several villages this week.