Russia has already lost the war, says Zelensky as he claims new victories

UKRAINE’S president has claimed fresh victories over occupying Russian forces as he told Moscow it had “already lost” the war.

Volodymyr Zelensky said three more villages had been liberated in the southern Kherson region following a wave of earlier successes in the area and other advances in the east of Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin has responded to the reverses, which have led to criticism of his country’s military effort within Russia, by claiming that the situation would stabilise soon. But amid US predictions that Russia could even be pushed out of Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014, Mr Zelensky warned President Putin that he faced an inevitable defeat.

“Now I will address the occupiers,” Mr Zelensky said in his daily video address.

“Even if you find some other weapon somewhere in the world with the same ‘natural’ name for your ‘Russian world,’ like these Iranian ‘Shahed,’ with which you are trying to bomb our cities, such as Bila Tserkva... It won’t help you anyway. You have already lost.”

Mr Zelensky claimed this was the result of Russia’s failure to explain to its people “why all this is needed: this war, the false mobilisation and self-destruction of all the prospects of your people”, as he took a swipe at Putin’s attempt to use inaccurate history to justify it.

“When people feel they are right and when they are on their own land, they themselves know everything,” he added.

“They do not need fanatic lectures on ‘alternative history’ and political information sessions every day—either at a meeting with teachers, or at a meeting about the progress of seasonal harvesting work.”

He added that Ukrainians “know what they are fighting for”, while Russians are increasingly “realising that they must die simply because” Putin “does not want to end the war”. He concluded that it was “obvious” Ukraine would eventually win the war. Mr Zelensky’s predictions came as Britain’s Ministry of Defence echoed his negative assessment of Russia’s situation in its latest update. It said that in the south “Ukrainian units have pushed the front line forwards by up to an additional 20km [12 miles]” with Russian forces usually withdrawing in the face of the advance.

The MoD added that the “damaged river crossing over the Dnipro [river] remains one of the few routes available” for Russia to resupply forces.

“Russia faces a dilemma: withdrawal of combat forces across the Dnipro makes defence of the rest of Kherson Oblast more tenable; but the political imperative will be to remain and defend,” today’s update added.

It said Russia also “currently has few additional, high-quality, rapidly-deployable forces available to stabilise the front: it likely aims to deploy mobilised reservists to the sector” in a further indication of the difficulties faced by the Kremlin’s forces.

Meanwhile, a senior US official told the Daily Telegraph that “the recapture of Crimea by Ukraine is now a distinct possibility and can no longer be discounted”. But the threats still posed by Russian forces was highlighted again today as a missile strike killed at least two people in Zaporizhzhia. Several residential buildings were damaged and fires broke out as a result of the attack.