President Zelenskyy: Ukraine does not trade its land and does not abandon its people

“Every our citizen, all our people on all the temporarily occupied Ukrainian land, all our people who are in captivity and waiting for their release, should see the most important thing – our Ukrainian flag,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a speech at the Fourth Summit of the International Crimea Platform.

Today we have Nariman Dzhelyal with us. A man who is well known in Ukraine. The Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people. By the way, he is a participant of our First Summit of the Crimea Platform. Like many other people whose hearts belong to Crimea and Ukraine, the Russian occupiers tried to deprive him of his home and captured Nariman as a prisoner. They captured him and kept him behind bars for almost three years. But Ukraine does not forget its prisoners and it has not forgotten Nariman Dzhelyal. We freed him, brought him home, brought him back to Ukraine, and gave him back his freedom. And this is not just about one person. This is about our fundamental policy. The policy of our state, the policy on Crimea. The policy on all our temporarily occupied territory and on all our Ukrainian citizens who have been deprived of their freedom by Russia. We will not leave anything or anyone in captivity. I would like all our citizens in Ukraine and in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine to hear this – no matter where you are now, and no matter how difficult it is for you. This is part of our morality. Ukraine does not trade its land and does not abandon its people. And when we work with the world for a just end to this war, we remind them not only of the land that now – temporarily – bears the occupier’s tricolor, but also of people’s fates that cannot be left destroyed. We in Ukraine do not forget many people. And today at the Memorial I remembered many of them, we remembered them. And we must do it all the time: remind the world, remind the loved ones and families of our prisoners that we know, we remember, and we fight for them. We remember Server Mustafayev, Leniye Umerova, Amet Suleymanov, Tofik Abdulhaziiev, Vladyslav Yesypenko, and all other Crimean prisoners – prisoners of Russia.

Full text of the address: Office of the President of Ukraine