Biletskyi: Russians did not take Kyiv in three days, did not break Ukraine in four years, and will not force our capitulation through deception
Ukraine survived because the nation chose to fight. Any attempt to sell what has been achieved through suffering and struggle during negotiations will lead to a profound moral breakdown.
Andrii Biletskyi, commander of the Third Army Corps, wrote about this in a blog post on UP on the anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to Censor.NET.
He recalled that four years ago, the Russians were going to take Kyiv in three days. In four years, they have not been able to completely occupy a single region of Ukraine. The country survived not because it had external support, but because hundreds of thousands of people decided to fight.
"Hundreds, thousands of Ukrainians drove the enemy away like a mammoth. Within a month, the Russians fled, leaving everything behind — the bodies of their dead, their vehicles, their equipment. Thirteen captured Russian tanks are still in service with the Third Assault Brigade. The Russian TOR-M air defense system we captured in the Kyiv region still protects one of the Ukrainian cities from the Russians," Biletskyi recalled the battles for the Kyiv region in March 2022.
He stated that Ukraine needs real peace that preserves its sovereignty and ability to defend itself in the future. This excludes the transfer of Ukrainian territories to the enemy in exchange for a "false peace" — Russia will use the pause to take revenge and rewrite the history of its shameful failure.
"If we abandon Ukrainian land and our people in Donbas today, where is the guarantee that we will not also abandon Ukrainian Kharkiv, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson under the threat of renewed war?" said the commander.
Biletskyi emphasized that the main peacemaker is the Ukrainian soldier on the front line, and the only way to achieve true peace is to stop the enemy along the front line. In his opinion, only then will the Russians be the first to sit down at the negotiating table and offer real terms, rather than a "Trojan horse."
"The Russians failed to take Kyiv in three days. They failed to break Ukraine in four years. And they will not succeed in forcing our surrender through deception," said the brigadier general.
