Ukraine war: Zelenskyy and Putin both promise victory in New Year speeches
The leaders of Ukraine and Russia both vowed to push for victory in New Year speeches, but while Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke of gratitude and pain, Vladimir Putin urged duty to Russia, casting the war as a near-existential fight.
Zelenskyy, recalling some of the most dramatic moments and victories of the war, filled his emotional 17-minute video message with footage of Russia's attacks on the country and words of pride for Ukrainians withstanding attacks, darkness and cold.
"We were told: you have no other option but to surrender. We say: we have no other option than to win," said Zelenskyy, dressed in his trademark khaki outfit and standing in darkness with the Ukrainian flag fluttering behind.
"We fight as one team -- the whole country, all our regions. I admire you all."
A few minutes after Zelenskyy's speech - released just before midnight Kyiv time on New Year's Eve -- numerous blasts were heard in the capital and around the country. The attacks followed a barrage of more than 20 cruise missiles fired across Ukraine on Saturday -- and many bombardments earlier.
As the war drags into its 11th month, Moscow was unprepared for the staunch resistance and billions of dollars in Western weapons that have turned the tide in Ukraine's favour.
Russian troops have been forced out of more than half the territory they took in the first weeks of what Putin calls a "special military operation" to "denazify" and demilitarise Ukraine. Kyiv and Western allies say Putin's invasion was a land grab.
Putin, breaking with tradition by delivering the New Year message flanked by troops rather than the Kremlin's walls, talked sternly and combatively about 2022 as the year that "clearly separated courage and heroism from betrayal and cowardice."
While
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