By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Ukraine on Wednesday marked its 31st anniversary of breaking free from the Russia-dominated Soviet Union amid the threat of attack from land, air, and sea.
Ukraine’s Independence Day falls six months after Russia’s February 24 invasion and will be marked by low-key celebrations.
The country’s military has urged people to take air raid warnings seriously.
“Russian occupiers continue to carry out air and missile attacks on civilian objects on the territory of Ukraine. Do not ignore air raid signals,” the general staff said in a statement early on Wednesday.
Public gatherings are banned in the capital Kyiv and a curfew is in force in the front-line eastern city of Kharkiv, which has weathered months of shelling.
The marking of Independence is expected to be a day of defiance against the Kremlin’s six-month-old war to subdue the country once again.
The government laid out carcasses of burnt-out Russian tanks and armored vehicles like war trophies in central Kyiv in a show of defiance.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned late on Tuesday of the possibility of “repugnant Russian provocations”.
“We are fighting against the most terrible threat to our statehood and also at a time when we have achieved the greatest level of national unity,” Zelenskiy said in an evening address.
Zelenskiy told representatives of about 60 states and international organizations attending a virtual summit on Crimea on Tuesday that Ukraine would drive Russian forces out of the peninsular by any means necessary, without consulting other countries beforehand.
Ukraine broke free of the Soviet Union in August 1991 after a failed putsch in Moscow and an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians voted in a referendum to declare independence.
