Approximately 26% of the territory of Ukraine is still under Russian occupation, but the Russian army is no longer able to advance significantly.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky stated this in an interview with the Italian TV channel Rai 1.
"For two years, it is important that we managed to protect our state. About 26% of the countryʼs territory is still under occupation, but we can see that the Russian army is not able to advance much. We stopped them," Zelensky emphasized.
The president recalls that in the first days of the full-scale war, people were very scared, there was a lot of chaos. Now everything is different, Ukrainians began to defend their land and families, because they had no alternative.
- Russia launched a war against Ukraine in 2014, when it occupied Crimea and parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. On February 24, 2022, the invaders began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine from the northern, eastern and southern directions.
- In April 2022, the Defense Forces expelled the occupiers from the northern regions of Ukraine, and in the fall de-occupied parts of the Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Kharkiv regions. On June 5, 2023, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine announced that the Defense Forces had gone on the offensive in some directions. Later there were reports of the de-occupation of settlements in the east and south. In October 2023, the occupiers went on the offensive near Avdiivka, trying to surround the city.