KYIV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he discussed the fate of the besieged port city of Mariupol in a meeting Friday with the country’s military leaders and the heads of its intelligence agencies.
“The details cannot be made public now, but we are doing everything we can to save our people,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address to the nation.
Elsewhere in southern Ukraine, he said Russian troops who occupy areas around Kherson and Zaporizhzhia were terrorizing civilians and looking for anyone who had served in the army or the government.
“The occupiers think this will make it easier for them to control this territory. But they are very wrong. They are fooling themselves,” Zelenskyy said.
He added: “The occupiers’ problem is not that they are not accepted by some activists, veterans or journalists. Russia’s problem is that it is not accepted — and never will be accepted -– by the entire Ukrainian people. Russia has lost Ukraine forever.”