The first president of Ukraine after leading the country to independence during the collapse of the Soviet Union, Leonid Kravchuk, died on Tuesday. He was 88.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky paid tribute to Kravchuk, calling him not just a historical figure but “a man who knew how to find wise words and to say them so that all Ukrainians would hear them”.
Ukrainian defence minister Oleksii Reznikov said that with Kravchuk’s signature to the December 1991 agreement disbanding the Soviet Union “the Evil Empire disintegrated”.
“Thank you for the peaceful renewal of our Independence. We’re defending it now with weapons in our hands,” Mr Reznikov tweeted.
Meanwhile, Russia on 24th February launched its invasion of Ukraine. And, according to the latest updates, Ukrainian forces have retaken villages in the Kharkiv region, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said in his nightly address. The number of civilians killed in Ukraine since the beginning of the war is “thousands higher” than official figures, the head of the UN’s human rights monitoring mission in the country said. At least 100 civilians remained in the Azovstal steelworks under heavy Russian fire in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, an aide to the city’s mayor said.
However, Belarus has said it will deploy special operations troops in three areas near its southern border with Ukraine. The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, said Moscow had agreed to help Minsk produce missiles and warned Belarus could “inflict unacceptable damage on the enemy”.