“I fire you”… Ukrainian president who leaves the capital for the first time, cuts him off in Kharkiv

Ukrainian President Volodmir Zelensky left the capital Kiiu for the first time since the invasion of Russia on February 24 to visit Kharkiv, the second city on the northeastern front, AFP news agency reported on the 29th (local time).

According to AFP news agency, the office of the President of Ukraine has released a video on the same day of President Zelensky wearing a bulletproof vest and looking around the Kharkiv buildings and infrastructure that had been destroyed by Russian shelling.

This is the first time Zelensk has left the capital since the invasion of Russia.

President Zelensky urged Kharkiv officials to “prepare so that the region can be reborn with a new look”.

“Russia should have known that we will defend our territory to the end,” Zelensky wrote on social media. “We will fight and we will surely win.”

“The Russian invasion destroyed 2,229 buildings in Kharkiv alone,” the presidential office said in a statement.

President Zelensky also said in a regular public address following his visit to Kharkiv that he had fired the local security chief.

The reason is that they have been passive in defending the city from the first day of the all-out war.

President Zelensky did not disclose a specific reason for his dismissal.

The second city, Kharkiv, was Russia’s main target city along with the capital Kiiu and the southern port city Mariupol.

In response, the Russian army, which invaded Ukraine on February 24, launched a simultaneous attack on the three cities of the capital, Kiiu, Kharkiv, and Mariopol.

However, due to fierce resistance from the Ukrainian forces, which had been fully supported by the West, the Russian forces near Kiiu withdrew, and recently also withdrew from Kharkiv.

In fact, the Russian army advanced to the vicinity of the capital, Kiiu, at the beginning of the war, but after that, it fell into a stalemate and redeployed the army to focus its forces on the battle in the eastern Donbas region.

Currently, the Gulf of Mariupol has been occupied and the two countries are fighting fiercely in the eastern Donbas region.

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