Kyiv, May 27 (EFE).- Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that Russia is preparing new ground offensives and has no interest in ending the war.
In his address to the nation on Monday night, Zelenskyy also announced an increase in the production of interception drones to counter Russian strikes after Russia launched three massive attacks with drones and missiles between Saturday and Monday, resulting in more than a dozen deaths across Ukraine.
“We can see from the information obtained by intelligence and from open-source data that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and his entourage do not plan to end the war. There is currently no indication that they are seriously considering peace or diplomacy. On the contrary, there is ample evidence that they are preparing new offensive operations,” Zelenskyy said.
Russia continues its attacks on the eastern Ukrainian front and has managed to almost completely expel Ukrainian forces occupying part of the Russian Kursk region.
Russian forces have also already captured at least four villages across the border, in Ukraine’s Sumy region.
“I instructed a significant increase in the production of our interceptor drones, and we will be engaging more funding from our partners to this,” Zelenskyy added, regarding the other issue he announced in his evening address, in which he also said he would allocate more funding to Ukraine’s missile program.
The Ukrainian president again called for more sanctions from the international community against Russia and additional for Ukraine to force Moscow to comply with a ceasefire of at least 30 days that Kyiv is seeking in order to boost peace negotiations.
Zelenskyy also noted that, a week after Putin said he would put his conditions for declaring this ceasefire in writing, Russia still had not presented this document.
Russia launched a total of 60 drones against Ukraine on Monday night, including Shahed kamikaze drones and replicas of these drones, which the Russians use to confuse enemy defenses, the Ukrainian air force reported in its latest report.
Ukrainian air defenses neutralized 43 of the attack drones launched by Russia over several regions in eastern, northern, and southern Ukraine.
According to the Ukrainian air force, Russian drones impacted in nine different locations while fragments of the intercepted drones fell in three other locations.
Russia and Ukraine launch long-distance drone attacks against each other’s territories almost daily. EFE
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