Zelensky defiantly reveals he is at his Kyiv office, ‘not hiding’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky released a new video overnight Monday, rallying his people, decrying Russian shelling of civilian areas, and accusing the Russian army of thwarting the evacuation of civilians through humanitarian corridors agreed after talks with Moscow.

Zelensky started the video by aiming his phone out of the window, defiantly proving he is at his office in the presidential palace in Kyiv, and not in hiding.

“I’m not afraid of anyone. For as long as it takes to win this war,” he said. “I’m staying here, I’m staying in Kyiv.”

“You know we used to say that Monday is a hard day,”quipped the comedian-turned-president. “There is a war in the country, so every day is Monday.”

During talks on Monday, the Russians proposed evacuation routes leading to Russia and its ally Belarus, rather than to areas of western Ukraine that remain peaceful.

“It’s just cynicism,” Zelensky said, claiming Moscow is looking only for a propaganda victory.

“They ensure that a small corridor to the occupied territory is open for a few dozen people. Not so much toward Russia as toward the propagandists, directly toward the television cameras,” he said.

Zelensky said that instead of an agreement on humanitarian corridors, what Ukraine got on Monday was “Russian tanks, Russian Grad rockets, Russian mines.

“They even mined the roads that were the agreed routes for taking food and medicine to the people, to the children, of Mariupol,” Zelensky said.

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He also lashed out at the Russians for what he described as inhuman bombing campaigns, include a strike that destroyed a bread factory, killing several people, according to Ukraine, and bomb damage to a church.

“They shot up a bread factory. Why? An old bread factory,” he said. “Who do you have to be to do such a thing? And to destroy another church in Zhytomyr oblast, the Church of the Blessed Virgin built in 1862. These are not people.”

Zelensky said negotiations with Russia are ongoing, but vowed its forces will be pushed out and the damage rebuilt.

He said that on the 12th day of the war, the Ukrainian army is counterattacking and inflicting extremely painful losses on the enemy.

“Battles are underway in the center, in the north and in the south of country – Mariupol and Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Sumy, Odesa and Kyiv, Mykolaiv and Zhytomyr.

“You are not retreating. We are not retreating,” he said, describing the “nightmare” that the Ukrainian resistance has brought upon Moscow.

“We will rebuild everything. We will make our cities that the occupier destroyed better than any city in Russia,” he vowed.

But Zelensky added that Kyiv would continue to negotiate with Russia to reach a peace deal.

Russia on Monday morning announced the creation of corridors to allow civilians to leave several besieged Ukrainian cities, with the humanitarian situation deteriorating as supplies start to run low.

But Ukraine refused to evacuate civilians to Russia as four of Moscow’s six proposed corridors led to Russia or its ally Belarus.

Russia on Monday evening announced that local ceasefires in Ukrainian cities including the capital Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol and Sumy would begin from 0700 GMT on Tuesday to facilitate the evacuation of civilians.

Moscow has said the routes are still due to be approved by Ukraine.