Zelensky announces the fracture of the "backbone" of the Russian army

 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that his country's army managed to inflict significant damage on the Russian armed forces, despite the defeat of the Ukrainian army in the coastal city of Mariupol.

Zelensky said in a television interview broadcast on Saturday that Ukraine had "broken the backbone" of the Russian army, "and they will not be able to stand on their own two feet in the coming years."

And prior to the publication of this interview, the last batch of Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol, numbering more than 2,400 people, surrendered and were taken into captivity by the Russian forces.

Zelensky stressed that Kyiv will regain everything, noting that a return to the lines before the twenty-fourth of last February - the day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine - would already be considered a victory, "because this would mean that they did not invade us and that we defended our country."

At the same time, Zelensky admitted that the path towards achieving this is very difficult, noting that ending the conflict will be diplomacy in the end.

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