During an address broadcast on his official Facebook account early Thursday local time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed the trigger for a Russian invasion may happen “any minute.”
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“The whole world is saying this can happen any day now. The trigger can appear any minute,” he was seen addressing Russian citizens in Russian. “You are being told this fire will free the Ukrainian people. But Ukrainian people are free.”
“Ukraine in your news and Ukraine in reality are two different countries. Their main difference between them is that ours is real,” Zelensky added.
After that, Zelensky refuted claims that Ukrainians were neo-Nazis who despised Russian culture.
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“You are being told we are Nazis. How can a nation that gave 8 million lives to combat Nazism support it? How can I be a Nazi? Tell my grandpa about that,” he said. “He was, through the whole war, in the infantry of the Soviet Army and died as a colonel in independent Ukraine.”
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“You are being told we hate Russian culture? How can someone hate culture? Any culture? Neighbors always enrich one another culturally, but that does not make them one, does not dissolve us in you,” Zelensky added. “We are different. But it is not a reason to be enemies.”
He concluded with the solemn message of, “We want to determine our history by ourselves. In peace, calm and honesty.”