Day 39 of the war. Address of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Ukrainians

Today this address will be without a greeting; I do not want any unnecessary formalities. Presidents usually do not record addresses like this one, but today I must speak exactly this way. Speak after what has been revealed in Bucha and other cities of ours from which the occupiers were driven out.

Hundreds of killed people. Tortured, shot, peaceful people. Bodies in the streets, mined territory, even the bodies of the killed were mined. Everywhere are the consequences of looting. Concentrated evil visited our land—killers, executioners, rapists, looters, who call themselves an army, and who deserve only death after what they have done. I want every mother of every Russian soldier to see the bodies of the killed people in Bucha, in Irpin, in Gostomel. What did they do? Why were they run over? What did the man who was riding a bicycle down the street do?

Why were ordinary peaceful people beaten to death in an ordinary peaceful city? Why were women strangled after their ears were torn out? How could women be raped and killed in front of their children? And mocked their bodies even after death? Why were people's bodies crushed by tanks? What did the Ukrainian town of Bucha do to your Russia? How did all this become possible? Russian mothers, even if you raised looters, how did they also become executioners? You could not have failed to know what was inside your children.

You could not have failed to notice that they are devoid of everything human, they have no soul, no heart. They killed intentionally and with pleasure. I want all the leaders of the RF to see how their orders are carried out. Such orders, such execution, and joint responsibility for these killings, for these tortures, for these arms torn off by explosions that lie in the street, for shots to the back of the head of tied-up people.

This is how the Russian state will now answer. This is your image. Your culture and human appearance perished together with the Ukrainians and Ukrainian women whom you came to. I have made a decision to create a special mechanism of justice in Ukraine for the investigation and judicial consideration of every criminal occupier on the territory of our state. The essence of this mechanism is the joint work of national and international specialists, investigators, prosecutors, and judges.

This mechanism will allow Ukraine and the world to hold specific individuals accountable who started or in any way participated in this terrible war against the Ukrainian people and in crimes against our people. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Office of the Prosecutor General, the national police, the Security Service of Ukraine, intelligence, and other structures according to their competence must direct all efforts to make this mechanism work immediately.

I call upon all our citizens and friends of Ukraine in the world who can join this work and help establish justice to do so. The world has already seen many war crimes at different times, on different continents, but the time has come to do everything so that the war crimes of the Russian military become the last manifestation of such evil on Earth. Everyone guilty of such crimes will be entered into a special Book of Executioners, will be found, and punished.

Ukrainians, Ukrainian women, I want you to realize this. We drove the enemy out of the territory of several regions, but occupied districts of other regions still remain under the control of Russian troops. And after the expulsion of the occupiers from there, even more terrible things may be revealed, even more deaths and abuses. Because such is the nature of the Russian military who came to our Land—they are degenerates who know no other way, and such were their orders. All partners of Ukraine will be detailedly informed about what was happening in the temporarily occupied territory of our state.

War crimes in Bucha and other cities during the Russian occupation will be a subject of consideration at the UN Security Council on Tuesday. There will certainly be a new sanctions package against Russia, but I am sure that this is not enough. Further conclusions are needed, not only about Russia, but also about the political behavior that effectively allowed this evil to come to our Land. Today is the 14th anniversary of the NATO summit in Bucharest.

Then there was a chance to take Ukraine out of the gray zone in Eastern Europe, out of the gray zone between NATO and Russia. Out of the gray zone where Moscow thinks that everything is permitted to them. Even the most terrible war crimes, behind optimistic diplomatic formulations that Ukraine could supposedly become a member of NATO then. In 2008, the refusal to accept Ukraine into the alliance was hidden.

The senseless fear of some politicians before Russia was hidden. They thought that by refusing Ukraine, they could appease Russia. They could convince it to respect Ukraine and live normally next to us. In 14 years, after that mistaken calculation, Ukraine experienced a revolution and 8 years of war in Donbas. And now we fight for life in the most terrible war in Europe for all time since the Second World War.

I invite Ms. Merkel, Mr. Sarkozy to visit Bucha and see where the policy of concessions to Russia has led in 14 years. To see with their own eyes tortured Ukrainians and Ukrainian women. I want me to be understood correctly. We do not blame the West, we do not blame anyone except the specific Russian soldiers who committed this against our people. Except also those who gave them the order.

But we have the right to speak about indecision, about what the path was to such a Bucha, to such a Gostomel, to such a Kharkiv, to such a Mariupol. We have no indecision, regardless of what block or non-block we were in. We understand one thing—we must be strong. 14 years ago, the leader of Russia in Bucharest told Western leaders that there is no such country as Ukraine. And we are proving that there is such a country, there was, and there will be.

We will not hide behind the strong of the world. We will not persuade anyone. Ideally, we should not even have had to ask for help with weapons to defend ourselves from this evil that came to our land. All necessary weapons should have been provided to us anyway without requests, because they themselves were perfectly aware of what evil had come and what exactly it brought with it. We see what ignited this war, we see what we are defending.

There are standards of the Ukrainian army, moral and professional. And it is not our army that must now adapt. It is many other armies that need to learn from our military. And there are standards of Ukrainian

people, and there are the standards of the Russian occupiers. This is good and evil, this is Europe and a Black Hole that wants to tear this apart and swallow it. We will win this war, even if some politicians are still unable to overcome the indecisiveness they pass on to their successors along with their positions. And in Bochi, all the necessary services are already working to bring the city back to life, restore the supply of electricity, water, the operation of medical institutions, restore the infrastructure, and provide security to the people, because Russia has been driven out, and Ukraine is returning and bringing life back.

Today I visited our border guards, our heroes, wounded fighters, at the hospital of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. I presented state awards, and also honored an orthopedic trauma surgeon, a medical service officer, who is a leading military traumatologist of Ukraine and has already saved many of our Ukrainian defenders.

In total, by the corresponding decree, I honored 41 border guards with state awards. It was the servicemen of the State Border Guard Service who first met the occupiers with fire when they launched their offensive on February 24. Now our boys and girls are returning to the state border as we drive out the occupiers. I am sure that the time will come when the entire state border line of Ukraine will be restored. And so that this happens faster, we must all be focused, ready to bravely look evil in the eye and respond to every criminal act against Ukraine, against our people, against our freedom.

Evil will be punished. Glory to Ukraine!