President Zelensky says Ukrainian long-range strikes have reached Perm, Chelyabinsk, and Yekaterinburg, targeting Russia's military-industrial complex.
2:13 PM
Ukraine has conducted long-range strikes against Russian military-industrial sites across multiple regions, with strikes reaching distances of up to 2,000 kilometers from the border, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday.
In a statement on Telegram, Zelensky said Ukrainian long-range strikes have again reached Perm, located more than 1,500 kilometers from Ukraine's border. He also reported recent strikes in Chelyabinsk, approximately 1,800 kilometers away, and Yekaterinburg, nearly 2,000 kilometers distant. Additional strikes have affected Novorossiysk, Krymsk, Tuapse, and the Samara and Nizhny Novgorod regions, according to Zelensky.
"I am grateful to our warriors for their precision," Zelensky wrote, crediting Ukrainian forces for the accuracy of the operations.
Zelensky stated that Ukraine had repeatedly offered the Russian leadership the opportunity to pursue peace negotiations. "We have repeatedly offered the Russian leadership to move toward peace. In response, we received only new Russian strikes. Therefore, this is exactly why Ukrainian long-range sanctions are moving toward remote Russian points related to the military-industrial complex," he said.
The strikes come as Russia has concentrated additional air defense systems around Moscow in recent weeks, according to Zelensky. In a separate statement Wednesday, he noted that Russia has redeployed air defense systems from other regions to build up defensive layers around the capital ahead of a planned military parade.
"We see that in recent weeks, additional rings of air defense have been built up around Moscow at the expense of a large-scale redeployment of systems from Russia's regions. This indicates that the Russian leadership is not preparing for the ceasefire that has been the subject of so many statements, and is more concerned about its parade in Moscow than about the rest of Russia," Zelensky said Wednesday, citing a briefing from Oleh Ivashchenko, head of Ukraine's Defense Intelligence.
Zelensky added that the concentration of air defense systems around Moscow creates new opportunities for Ukraine's long-range operations. "At the same time, we observe that this creates additional opportunities for our long-range sanctions. We will define our corresponding priorities," he said.
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