I wish you good health, fellow Ukrainians!
Today’s events. The main thing: an exchange took place. And this is the first stage of the largest exchange agreed upon in Türkiye. In fact, it is the only significant outcome of the meeting in Türkiye – everything else is being blocked by the Russians. Blocked for now. But bringing our people back is exactly what we always work for. We will definitely bring everyone back. Every one of our citizens, every Ukrainian servicemember and civilian, all Ukrainian hostages held in Russia – we must free all of them. Today, almost four hundred, 390 people are back home – both military and civilians. Tomorrow and the day after, the next stages will follow. The formula is a thousand for a thousand.
I am grateful to everyone and to our entire team involved in carrying out the exchange. And certainly, I thank all our warriors at the front who specifically ensure the replenishment of Ukraine’s exchange fund. And also, I want to thank our law enforcement officers for adding Russian saboteurs and collaborationists to the exchange fund. What matters most is that Ukraine is bringing its people home. I thank everyone around the world who is helping us.
And just as we succeed in this, we must succeed in everything else. A ceasefire is needed. Diplomatic steps toward real peace are needed. A new and effective security architecture is needed. We are bringing our partners together to make this happen. And it is clearly time to increase pressure on Russia to achieve not just one result, but everything that is necessary. And when Russia takes a whole week just to come up with a so-called “memorandum” as their response to calls for a ceasefire – this is nothing but a mockery of the entire world. So much time wasted! Every day of this war costs lives. Of course, in Russia, lives don’t count. But the world must count them. New sanctions against Russia are needed. I thank everyone who is advocating for and supporting this.
