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.

- Martin Bentham

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.”