Poroshenko on the beginning of the invasion: we did not lose thanks to the Ukrainian people
During a special broadcast on the TV channels “Pryamiy” and “Channel 5” on the anniversary of the full-scale invasion, Petro Poroshenko stated that the country was able to survive these four years thanks to the Ukrainian people.
“I think that February 24 is a day that you will never be able to forget. It’s four in the morning, a red phone, you wake up from explosions, from calls. Burning Boryspil on one side, burning Vasylkiv on the other side, bombings of airports. And shocked people,” Poroshenko recalled the first hours of the invasion.
He also recalled how, at least six months before the invasion, he tried to reach out to the authorities and explained that they needed to prepare for a possible major war.
What else was I supposed to say? Deploy the two airborne brigades that were with me there to the Chongar direction, just don’t take them away from there. Deploy a brigade in Ovruch, because the strike will be delivered from the territory of Belarus. To which I was answered – “we spoke with the Minister of Defense of Belarus, he promised that there will be no strike”. When I say – protect the Chernobyl station and deploy a deployed brigade in the Chernihiv region. When I say, replenish the first-tier reserves, these are 80 thousand servicemen, the main combat brigades. Give 40 billion to territorial communities – with weapons, with drones, with bulletproof vests, with everything for the deployment of territorial defense units. Imagine how different the first days of the war would have been. The enemy would have stopped at Chongar, the enemy would have been stopped on the border of Belarus”, says the fifth President.
“Do not ignore the warnings of our partners, and instead of arguing about the reliability of intelligence information, please get air defense and shoot down all helicopters that cross Ukrainian airspace. This is what we said,” Poroshenko reminded.
“When we proposed a detailed package in parliament, UAH 60 billion plus UAH 40. UAH 60 billion for the Armed Forces, UAH 40 billion for additional personnel. It was a clash of two ideologies. One ideology is the army, language, faith. The second ideology is “what a difference”. And we paid a terrible price for this ideology,” Poroshenko stated.
“And why didn’t we lose? We didn’t lose precisely because the Ukrainian people didn’t let us do it. The queues at the military registration and enlistment offices. And the determination and unity with which we acted from the first hours. I will never forget in my life two thousand people in our yard on Lavrska, who came to register in the first 8 hours, because the military registration and enlistment offices were closed. The people remained to defend. That’s why we didn’t lose,” Poroshenko explained.
“During the 5 years of my term, we created the Armed Forces. A nation was born. The language was protected, the OCU was created. And the nation really demonstrated not only that Putin was wrong, but that the partners were also wrong. We were not going to give up. We are a free, freedom-loving, European and invincible nation,” Poroshenko noted.
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