Zelenskyy: repelling a full-scale war to the point from where it began on February 24 is a victory

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy considers the repulse of russian troops to the positions they held before February 24 to be a victory in the phase of a full-scale war with Russia

Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated this in an interview with Ukrainian journalists.

When asked by journalists what could be considered a victory in this war, the President said:

"First, we must not lose our sovereignty.

Second, I really want us not to lose hundreds of thousands of people.

Third, there can be no talk that we will allow Crimea to be called someone's territory. It is only ours.

And Donbas for me and for all of us is Ukraine.

We are simply not talking about the territories they are now temporarily occupying and which were under our control until February 24.

The war for Donbas is what we are talking about. It is very important for us to preserve these territories as Ukrainian, this is one of the fundamental things, but it will be the most difficult story."

"I understand where we are and who we are, what kind of country we are, what we have lost, what we can lose, and what we have saved. And I believe that repelling a full-scale war to the point where it began on February 24 is a victory," he said. Zelenskyy.

When asked about the cost of the offensive, Zelenskyy said it could cost Ukraine 40,000 to 50,000 lives in the beginning.

In total, such an offensive, he said, could lead to the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.

To recap, Zelenskyy visited Bucha, where evidence of mass killings of Ukrainian civilians by russians was found.

On April 1, Bucha was liberated from the russian occupiers. On April 2, Bucha Mayor Anatolii Fedoruk announced that nearly 300 citizens had been buried in mass graves and that dozens of corpses lay in the streets, some with their hands tied.

As of the morning of April 4, 330-340 Ukrainian civilians killed by russians in Bucha were buried.

On April 3, the Prosecutor General announced that 410 bodies of killed civilians had been removed from the territory of the Kyiv region, which had been liberated from the occupiers.