Russians changed tactics and already thinking about defense of temporarily occupied territories - Zelensky

He said this in an interview with representatives of the Finnish, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian media, Ukrinform reports.

"I believe that every day they will weaken and we will have more and more chances. They [Russians] have already changed their tactics. They are already thinking about the defense of the territories they occupy. This is another wave of this war. This is a difficult wave for us as well, because we understand that their persistence on the battlefield, what they had at the beginning, has been broken by our forces. And today they are digging in, making defensive lines, etc. This will be difficult for us, it will be very difficult, but this is the second part, this is the part in which we are going to take the initiative in this war," Zelensky emphasized.

He said that the Russian army is demotivated, and the fact that the Russians "recruit some people who do not know how to fight is not about the troops, it is about their people."

"They [Russians] are not sorry to waste their lives, it is their choice. They chose a leader, and he chose to leave them in Ukrainian land. But their army is demotivated. There are still some groups of people who are still motivated, but we see it, we hear it, we hear how they lose motivation every day, we hear how they are afraid of us," the president said.

As reported, from February 24, 2022 to April 29, 2023, the Armed Forces of Ukraine eliminated about 190,040 Russian invaders, including 580 people over the past day.