President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky compared his country's current resistance against the Russian invasion to Ukraine's efforts to defeat Nazi Germany on the occasion of the anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, DPA reported, quoted by BTA.
"Eighty years ago, millions of Ukrainians fought to defeat Nazism forever", the head of state said in a video address recorded during his visit today to the village of Yagodno, in northern Ukraine's Chernihiv region, DPA noted, adding that an alleged war crime was committed at this location by Russian forces in 2022.
"Now, however, Ukrainians are again facing the evil that has been reborn, has returned and wants to destroy us again,", Zelensky also says.
DPA recalls that during the Russian occupation of Yagodno, more than 350 of the village's inhabitants, including 80 children, were kept locked in the basement of the school for weeks. The case was documented not only by Ukrainians, but also by world media, the agency notes.
Zelensky says that ten of those imprisoned died and seventeen people were killed. According to him, these events show what Russia is like under the rule of its president, Vladimir Putin. "If this is not Nazism, what is it?", the Ukrainian president asks rhetorically in his emotional video, DPA points out.
Zelensky also states that the Ukrainian army liberated Yagodno at the end of March 2022 and that he sees this as a sign that history may repeat itself, as in the victory over the Nazis.
"Anyone who came to destroy us will then flee from Ukrainian land," the president of Ukraine said.