In Japan, Zelensky compared the destruction of Bachmut to Hiroshima in 1945

Update: 21.05.2023 14:51

Hiroshima – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj compared the destruction of the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut to what Hiroshima, Japan looked like after the US dropped a nuclear bomb on it at the end of World War II. Zelenskyy made his comments directly in Hiroshima, where he attended the summit of the leaders of the G7 group of major economies as a guest, Reuters writes.

Russia claims to have captured all of Bakhmut, which Ukraine denies. The city, which had a population of about 70,000 before the conflict, has become the scene of the longest and bloodiest battle of the current war in Ukraine, which began in February 2022. Aerial images of Bakhmut show burned and destroyed buildings and streets littered with debris.

“I’ll tell you frankly. The images of destroyed Hiroshima definitely remind me of Bakhmut and other similar cities. Nothing alive was left there, all the houses were destroyed,” Zelenskyy told reporters.

The American air raid on August 6, 1945 leveled Hiroshima with a single bomb and took the lives of 140,000 people. Three days later, the United States dropped another atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, which had a similarly devastating effect. Six days later, Japan capitulated as a participant in World War II.

At the press conference, the Ukrainian president also told journalists that Ukrainian forces are still fighting and performing “important tasks” in Bakhmut. “Today they are in Bakhmut – in what places, I won’t tell you. But it says that Bakhmut has not been occupied by the Russian Federation to date. There are not two or three interpretations of this fact,” he noted. He added that he would like to see Bakhmut and other cities rebuild as successfully as Hiroshima after the end of the war. On the sidelines of the G7 summit, Zelenskyy bowed to the memory of the victims of the atomic bomb at the monuments in Hiroshima.

Ukraine’s ground forces commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said today that Ukrainian forces control not a significant part of Bakhmut, but that it will be enough to enter the devastated city when the situation changes. In a post on social media, Telegram said Ukrainian forces were advancing towards Russian troops on the outskirts of Bakhmut and were approaching a “tactical encirclement” of the city.