30th day of the war. Address of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Ukrainians

Strong nations, the best countries in the world. I want to begin this address with words of greeting from myself and, on your behalf, from all our citizens of Ukraine, to the employees of the Security Service of Ukraine. Today is their day; 30 years ago, on March 25, the Security Service of our state was founded. The Service has traveled a difficult path, and we all know this. But we also know that during the 8 years of war in Donbas and already during the 30 days of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many employees of the Security Service have shown themselves from the best heroic side.

Principled, courageous, and capable of inflicting losses on the enemy that the enemy did not expect. This is exactly what Ukraine needs right now. I am grateful to all our heroes from the Security Service of Ukraine. I am grateful to everyone in the Service who, throughout the 30 years of our shared history, thwarted the plans of enemies and worked solely in the interests of the Ukrainian people. Congratulations on the holiday, respect to all, and we will always remember all the employees of the Security Service who died, unfortunately, but for Ukraine, while performing tasks to counter Russian aggression.

During this month of combat operations, 77 employees of the Security Service of Ukraine have been honored with state awards. Two of them are awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine "Posthumously." Both distinguished themselves in battles in the area of Makariv, Kyiv region. Thanks to their courageous actions, an enemy headquarters and over 20 occupiers were destroyed.

I cannot name the surnames of our heroes for you. Such is the nature of the service, but I can say confidently that the memory of them will indeed be eternal. Today, I signed a decree on honoring 63 employees of the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine with state awards.

Seven of them posthumously. Police officers, rescuers, border guards, special forces of the State Bureau of Investigation, and employees of the judicial security service. Grateful to everyone. Our heroic armed forces, over the passing week, dealt powerful blows and noticeable losses to the enemy. They say the Minister of Defense of Russia has disappeared somewhere.

Interestingly, perhaps he personally wanted to visit Chornobaivka. We are grateful to our defenders, who showed the occupiers that the sea will not be calm for them even when there is no storm, because there will be fire, as on those Russian ships that this week departed via the well-known route from the port of Berdyansk. I want to warn all traitors of Ukraine who switched to the enemy's side in Crimea years ago. You switched because you thought you would live better. And not because you want to return to the tragic fate of your colleagues, to repeat the fate of those who died on those ships or elsewhere on the land or sea of Ukraine.

So live that way, and that means stay far away from our cities and from our army. The tally of Russian losses in this war has already exceeded 16 thousand killed, including senior commanders. There have been no reports yet of killed Russian colonel-generals or admirals, but the commander of one of the occupier's armies and the deputy commander of the Black Sea Fleet already are. The Armed Forces continue to repel enemy attacks in the south of the country, in Donbas, in the Kharkiv direction, and in the Kyiv region.

By containing Russian actions, our defenders are leading the leadership of Russia to a simple and logical thought. It is necessary to speak. To speak substantively, urgently, honestly, and for the sake of a result, not for the sake of stalling for time. 16 thousand Russian military personnel have already died. For what? What does this give to anyone? The conversation must be serious; Ukrainian sovereignty must be guaranteed, and the territorial integrity of Ukraine must be ensured. That is, the conditions must be fair, and the Ukrainian people will simply not accept anything else.

Over the course of a week, we managed to establish the operation of 18 humanitarian corridors. A total of 37,606 people were rescued from blocked cities. Specifically, through a humanitarian corridor from Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia, 26,477 residents of Mariupol were successfully evacuated. The situation in the city remains tragic, absolutely tragic.

Russian military personnel do not allow any humanitarian cargo into the city, except when they use residents of Mariupol in staged performances for their propagandists, pretending that they have started distributing something to the people. I will continue to inform the peoples of other countries in great detail about such disgusting cynicism of the occupiers, about all the war crimes of Russia against the peaceful residents of our heroic Mariupol and other cities of Ukraine.

This is very important. I want to emphasize: not only politicians, not only government officials, but, first and foremost, the people. Everyone on the planet must know what Russia is doing. So that responsibility for crimes against the Ukrainian people becomes inevitable and maximally severe for the Russian military. In just one week, I spoke in the parliaments of Italy, Japan, France, and Sweden, and before the participants of the summits of NATO, the G7, and the leaders of the European Union.

Each of these speeches attracted maximum attention in the respective countries and in the world as a whole. Feedback demonstrates that the Ukrainian position was heard. And this is my main goal in such speeches. Do you know perfectly well what a powerful system of state propaganda Russia has built? They have spent and are spending tens of billions of dollars on this.

Probably, no one in the world has yet spent such insane amounts of money on lies. But they failed to consider one thing: where the path of lies must be paved with money, and the result is not guaranteed. The path of truth, the difficult path of truth, paves itself. The main thing is to be sincere. Next week, I continue this important work for the sake of our interests. The interests of Ukraine, the interests of freedom and independence. I spoke today with the President of Turkey, Erdogan.

We discussed the results of the NATO summit. Of course, we also spoke about what efforts could bring peace closer for Ukraine and end this senseless invasion of Russia into foreign land. There is important news from our government officials. First, they have already begun payments of pensions for April. Specifically, the Pension Fund has transferred to Oschadbank the full amount of pensions for the Chernihiv and Luhansk regions. As early as tomorrow, people will have the money on their cards, and Ukrposhta will be delivering cash. Tomorrow and the day after, the payment of April pensions will continue in other regions of the Eastern and Central parts of Ukraine.

In a few days, the wave of payments will cover the entire state. This is one of the priorities for us now. The Ukrainian state has performed and will

to fulfill all obligations to our citizens, to our pensioners. Second, under the program, there is support for people who have lost their jobs or the opportunity to engage in entrepreneurship. More than 20 billion hryvnias have already been paid. The amount of payments is 6,500 hryvnias. Third, government officials are preparing a new support program for our displaced persons from combat zones. Regional administrations have received a clear task to quickly allocate land for the construction of temporary housing for displaced persons.

I want to emphasize once again, this is temporary housing. After we establish peace, we will begin the immediate large-scale reconstruction of our state. But now people need a temporary home, their own home. And it is better for this home to be in Ukraine than somewhere abroad. We pay assistance, we provide jobs, the people are our own, the country is our own. All the details of this support program will be presented by the Prime Minister of Ukraine, Denys Shmyhal. And a few more words about the path of truth, about those who bring you and us truthful information about everything that is happening in our country.

Today I want to especially thank our journalists. To everyone who ensures the operation of the national telethon "United News". To all our media professionals, correspondents, presenters, editors, media managers, camera operators, directors, editors, makeup artists, producers. To everyone, everyone, without whom modern television is unimaginable. To everyone who united and, together with all other defenders of our people, provides Ukrainians with truthful information and, no less importantly, confidence, 24/7.

I am grateful to all of you and I am sure I can say this on behalf of all Ukrainians. Glory to you all! Glory to all our heroes! Glory to Ukraine!