100 speeches in 100 days of war: Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky rallies his country
LA TimesUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is projected on a screen during a speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month. As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tells it, when Russia invaded 100 days ago, no one expected his country to survive. “But they didn’t know us,” he said in a late-night video address in April when the war hit its 50th day. That the country did not fall within days as Russia expected, he said on April 14, was because millions of Ukrainians “made the most important decision of their life — to fight.” He also has tried to reach a Russian audience, as on April 1 when he switched from Ukrainian into Russian to urge Russians to keep their sons away from the war. At home.” In his video address Friday on the war’s 100th day, Zelensky said many words and numbers are now associated with the war, but “there are three words for which we have been fighting for 100 days after eight years: ‘peace,’ ‘victory,’ ‘Ukraine.’ Glory to Ukraine!” In justifying the Feb. 24 invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was saving Ukraine from the “drug addicts and neo-Nazis” of Zelensky’s government.