Zelenskiy hails Ukraine’s survival as it braces for protracted conflict

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has hailed the survival of his country, 100 days into a Russian invasion that has devastated it, claimed thousands of lives and threatened global food supplies.

In a defiant video that echoed his rallying cry to the country shortly after Moscow launched its all-out assault on February 24th — which at that time targeted him, his government and Kyiv — Mr Zelenskiy spoke from outside his office in the capital with his top aides at his side.

“The president is here, the armed forces of Ukraine are here. And most importantly our people are here,” he said. “We have been defending Ukraine for 100 days. Victory is ours.”

His bravado on Friday in part reflected fresh supplies of heavier and longer-range weaponry from the US and European countries.

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While millions of Ukrainians have become refugees and casualties have risen, Mr Zelenskiy remains in control of the capital. But the country is braced for a grinding and drawn-out war with its neighbour’s larger army. Russia now occupies 20 per cent of Ukrainian territory in the east and south of the country, up from 7 per cent previously, and is pressing on with its proclaimed aim of capturing all of the eastern Donbas region.

The office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on Friday said it had recorded 4,183 civilian deaths but warned that “actual figures are considerably higher”. This figure does not include combatant casualties.

The conflict between two countries that are large agricultural exporters has roiled global grain and vegetable oil markets, pushing up prices and threatening food shortages. Ukraine accounts for about 10 per cent of the international wheat trade, and the Russian naval blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports has virtually halted grain exports.

US president Joe Biden on Friday said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had driven up food and petrol prices. “This is a Putin price hike,” he said, blaming the Russian president for spiralling inflation around the world.

He said the US and EU were working “to get more of the grain locked in Ukraine right now out on the world market, which could help bring down prices — there’s ways to do that over land”.

Mr Putin said Russia would guarantee the safe passage of cargo ships that came to transport grain from Ukrainian ports “without conditions”, but denied Moscow was responsible for the blockade and instead blamed the food supply crisis on western sanctions.

“The problem of exporting grain from Ukraine does not exist,” he said in a state television interview.

Macky Sall, Senegal’s president and head of the African Union, met Mr Putin on Friday to discuss the impact of food shortages caused by the invasion. “Countries that are so far away from the theatre [of war] are still feeling its consequences,” he told Russia’s leader, according to a Kremlin transcript.

“The sanctions against Russia have made the situation even worse,” Mr Sall said, complaining African countries had lost access to wheat and fertilisers. “The situation was complicated enough and now it’s even more complicated, which has consequences for food security in Africa,” he added. Mr Sall said countries needed to ensure “foodstuffs, particularly grain, and fertiliser are removed from sanctions”.

– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2022