Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday vowed “retaliation” against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and signing into law a law banning the Moscow-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church, as his country celebrates independence from the Soviet Union.
Moscow and kyiv also announced a prisoner of war exchange involving 230 people – 115 for each side – mediated by the United Arab Emirates.
On August 6, Ukrainian forces took the fighting to their enemy’s soil by launching an offensive of unprecedented scale in the Russian border region of Kursk. They have seized dozens of localities there, while Russian troops continue to advance in Donbass, eastern Ukraine.
Russia wanted to “destroy us” but the war has “returned home,” Zelensky told his compatriots in a video recorded in a forest area of the Sumy region, the border region from where kyiv launched its surprise offensive into Russia.
kyiv “surprises once again,” Zelensky said, promising that Russia “will learn what retaliation is.”
In Russia, President Vladimir Putin met with Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. According to the Kremlin, they discussed “the fight against enemy forces invading the Kursk region and measures taken to destroy them.”
These terms contrast with previous statements which tended to minimise the Ukrainian operation.
Prisoners of war released
Despite these warlike declarations, Russia and Ukraine announced a new prisoner exchange involving 230 people, including soldiers who had been captured during the surprise Kursk offensive.
According to Ukrainian Human Rights Commissioner Dmytro Loubinets, 82 of the 115 people rescued by kyiv are soldiers who participated in the defense of the Azovstal plant during the siege of Mariupol in 2022, a major military event in Ukraine.
Ukraine had claimed to have taken prisoner “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 took place through the United Arab Emirates, which praised itself for being “a reliable mediator” and called for “de-escalation” as “the only way to resolve the conflict.”
Mr Zelensky took part in official independence celebrations in kyiv’s Hagia Sophia Square on Saturday, alongside Polish President Andrzej Duda and Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte, two major supporters of his country.
He said on this occasion that the Ukrainian forces had successfully tested a new “missile drone”, the “Palianytsia”, “much faster and more powerful” than the drones they currently have.
Mr Zelensky also signed into law the law banning the branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate, which had long been the country’s main denomination.
This branch cut ties with Moscow in 2022, but the Ukrainian authorities still consider it to be under Russian influence and have increased legal proceedings against it, leading to the imprisonment of dozens of priests.
Although this Church is losing influence in the face of the new independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church founded in 2018, it still retains thousands of parishes across the country.
“Ukrainian Orthodox people are taking a step today to free themselves from the demons of Moscow,” said Volodymyr Zelensky.
At the gates of Pokrovsk
While the Ukrainian military offensive launched on August 6 in the Russian region of Kursk is receiving a lot of attention because it brings hostilities to the attacker’s soil, the epicenter of the fighting remains in the Ukrainian industrial region of Donbass (East), where the Russian army has the advantage.
Russian forces are approaching Pokrovsk, a major logistics hub and a town of some 53,000 people that the authorities have called for urgent evacuation. They were less than ten kilometres from the town on Friday.
In another major town in the region, Kostyantynivka, five people were killed and five others injured on Saturday in a Russian strike on residential areas, according to the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office.
kyiv also claimed to have struck an ammunition depot in the Voronezh region in western Russia. Local Russian authorities reported drone strikes and the evacuation of a village.
Ukrainian officials have said their offensive in Russia is aimed at creating a “buffer zone” against shelling, forcing Moscow into “fair” negotiations and pushing the Russian military to redeploy forces from other parts of the front.
Since the start of the operation, more than 130,000 people have fled fighting and shelling in the Kursk region, according to authorities. At least 31 civilians have been killed and 143 injured, according to a partial report by the Russian state news agency TASS.
This Ukrainian offensive does not, however, appear to have slowed the Russian advance in eastern Ukraine, where Moscow’s forces seized several villages this week.