Zelenskyy: Ukraine 'advancing' and West 'is not pressuring' for faster results

09 July 2023

Editor's note: The video hyperlink was corrected to the most recent version.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shared new personal insights during an exclusive interview on Sunday's edition of ABC's This Week into the progress that his country's defensive forces are making against Russian President Vladimir Putin's illegal invasion, which as of Saturday has slogged on for more than five hundred days.

"What is your assessment of how the counter-offensive is going right now?" moderator and chief global affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz asked Zelenskyy, whose responses were translated into English by an interpreter.

"All of us, we want to do it faster because every day means new losses of Ukrainians. We are advancing," Zelenskyy affirmed. "We are not stuck in one place. We [have] already overtaken the initiative several months ago. In some places in the East, we had to retreat. In some other communities, we would regain lost ground, but it was kind of a stagnation, meaning loss of manpower and equipment. And of course, we would all like to see the counter-offensive accomplished in a shorter period of time, but there is reality today. The initiative is on our side."

Zelenskyy also commended Ukraine's Western allies for their patience as Ukraine, slowly but surely, reclaims Russian-occupied territory.

You've read Western officials. You've read others saying they wanted it to move faster. Did you feel pressure?" Raddatz queried.

"Well, I don't feel any pressure at all," Zelenskyy replied. "They seem to understand how challenging and difficult it is, how difficult it is to survive, and how difficult it is to fight to seize initiative in our war with Russia, given the total strength of Russians and amount of equipment they have in their possession. So they are not pressuring me."

Watch the clips below or at this link.

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