President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed more “retribution” against Russia Saturday and signed a law banning the Moscow branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as the country celebrated its third independence day since the Russian invasion.
Zelensky released a video filmed in a forested border area from where Ukraine launched a surprise incursion into Russia on August 6.
Independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 is being marked with the war at a particularly tense moment, with Ukraine pursuing its incursion into the Kursk region as Russia targets towns in eastern Ukraine.
Standing in a hilly area near where Ukrainian forces entered Russia, Zelensky said, “Russia was seeking one thing: to destroy us.
“Instead, today we celebrate the 33rd Independence Day of Ukraine. And what the enemy brought to our land has now returned to its home.”
He called President Vladimir Putin a “sick man from Red Square who constantly threatens everyone with the red button”, referring to nuclear war. Zelensky vowed that Russia “will know what retribution is”.
The Ukrainian leader later held official celebrations on Kyiv’s Sofia Square, with Polish President Andrzej Duda and Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte.
He announced that Ukrainian forces had carried out “successful” tests of a new drone missile – the Palianytsia – and that the “enemy was defeated”.
Zelensky said he had also signed a bill to give “full support for all our soldiers operating on the territory of the aggressor state”.
Ukraine’s Kursk invasion has rattled Moscow, but not slowed Russia’s advance in eastern Ukraine.
Kyiv has evacuated some people from the logistics hub of Pokrovsk in the eastern Donetsk region, amid fears that it will fall to Russian forces.
Speaking in front of St Michael’s Cathedral, loyal to a patriarchy of the Orthodox Church that broke away from Moscow, Zelensky said a new law banning the Russian-linked church “protects Ukrainian Orthodoxy from Moscow’s dependence and guarantees the dignity of the shrines of our Ukrainian people”.
In his video address, Zelensky declared that the “Ukrainian Orthodox [church] today is taking a step towards liberation from Moscow’s devils”.
Ukraine has been seeking to distance itself from the Russian church since 2014 and the efforts have accelerated since Russia’s 2022 invasion.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church officially broke away from the Moscow patriarchy in 2022, but Ukrainian officials repeatedly accuse its clerics of staying loyal to Russia.
Russia’s invasion has been backed by the country’s Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill, a staunch ally of President Vladimir Putin.
Russia has slammed the move as “illegal”.
The Russian Orthodox Church, which used to preside over a large part of Ukrainian parishes, is furious over a 2019 schism that saw the creation of a Kyiv-based branch of the church.
This week it called the ban comparable to “persecutions in the Roman Empire in the times of Nero and Diocletian, the so-called de-Christianisation of France and atheist repressions in the Soviet Union.”
The Moscow church called the law a “political declaration” that will affect “hundreds of monasteries”.
Under the law, a time limit is set for religious groups to break ties with Russia.
Russia said on Saturday its air defences had destroyed seven Ukrainian drones over its southern Voronezh region and Belgorod and Bryansk border regions.
Voronezh governor Alexander Gusev said a state of emergency was declared in Ostrogozhsky district after drone strikes, with 200 people evacuated from one village. He said one woman was hospitalised and in a “serious condition”.
Ukraine has hit Russian regions with drone attacks for months.
Amid Ukraine’s counteroffensive, Russia and Ukraine exchanged 115 prisoners each on Saturday after negotiations mediated by the United Arab Emirates, an Emirati official said.
