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Although the cross-border offensive carries risks, it bore fruit on Saturday with the first prisoner exchange with Russia in several months.
By Andrew E. Kramer
Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine
Messaging expert President Volodymyr Zelensky used his latest Independence Day speech on Saturday to make it clear that Ukraine is leading the fight against Russia, even as its troops fight along the front line in the east.
He said video of the speech filmed near the site where his troops launched a cross-border offensive on Russian territory just three weeks ago stunned Moscow and led to a bounty in Russian prisoners of war. It bore fruit without delay on Saturday when the two sides sent 115 prisoners to each other in a negotiated exchange through the United Arab Emirates.
Zelensky’s video was pre-recorded from what he described as a location along the Psel River, an area attacked by Russian artillery.
“Whoever needs anguish in our land will have it at home,” Zelensky said of the incursion that has spread to the Kursk region in southwestern Russia.
He called the army operation, which comes two and a half years after Russia’s brutal and all-out invasion of Ukraine, a “boomerang of evil. ”
During the prisoner exchange, Ukraine said it had released infantrymen held in Russia as soon as the invasion began. This included dozens of infantrymen who had resisted the siege of the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol for months, before surrendering on Zelensky’s orders when flight or continued resistance became desperate.
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