2 years ago
Mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko on Sunday delivered a defiant message to Russian forces encircling Ukraine’s capital city: “Huge patriotic waves” of Ukrainians” are “ready to fight.”
Klitschko, who said he had spoken with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier in the day, said that his city is “under pressure 24 hours” a day from a “non-stop bombing attack” of Russian forces amassed on the Ukrainian capital’s outskirts some 15 miles from Kyiv.
Klitschko, a former heavyweight boxing champion who has been mayor of the Ukrainian capital since 2014, told CNN’s “State of the Union” that “Ukrainian soldiers destroyed the planes of Russians as they attempt to make a circle around Kyiv.”
On defending the city, which has come under sustained shelling since Russia advanced on Ukraine Feb. 24, Klitschko said: “Right now, huge patriotic waves … people who never, ever expect to take weapons in hand right now to defend houses, children and our future, the future of our country.”
Klitschko appeared with his brother, Wladimir, also a boxer who has joined the fight on the ground in Kyiv, who said: “The whole country is highly motivated to stop Russian aggression and the war. There is nothing that is possibly can break the will of our women and men. We all stand together and we're highly motivated to defend our country because this is our home. We will defend the country until the last drop of the blood.”
The brothers delivered a plea to Western governments to further sanction Russia and deliver weapons to Ukraine.
“We're fighting for the same values, the same principles. This war can touch anyone — everyone, everyone in the European Union, in Europe and can touch everyone in the world,” the mayor said.
“Right now every Ukrainian is target. Every Ukrainian. It's a war against whole population,” he added.
English (US)