During the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented state awards to representatives of local self-government bodies and military administrations, as well as the honorary distinctions “Hero City of Ukraine”.

We got through this winter thanks to all our people who work for our state, for their communities, thanks to the professionals in energy companies and municipal services. I want to thank you all. Business also performed well – supplies, logistics.

The Head of State thanked them for their resilience throughout this difficult winter and for supporting the front, and expressed special gratitude to the servicemembers for all their efforts in defending Ukraine, in particular our skies, along with critical and civilian infrastructure, from Russian attacks.

Today, the United States has turned to diplomacy in the situation around Iran, and the world supports this. A ceasefire always creates more space for diplomacy and should precede a genuine end to the war. Ukraine has always approached this war – Russia’s war against Ukraine – from the same position.

The Head of State congratulated the ambassadors on the start of their diplomatic missions in our country and thanked them for their support of Ukraine and its independence.

Right now, the Russians are trying to scale up their “safaris” against our people. And we must have the tools, all the necessary tools, from sufficient funding to real weapons, to continue expanding both our protection against the Russians and our ability to bring the war back to Russia, justly, with our long-range capabilities.

Here in Ukraine, we are doing our part of this work – consistently – and our long-range sanctions continue to be very effective and are actually reducing Russian revenues, primarily oil revenues. This is entirely fair, and most importantly, it limits Russia’s ability to drag out this war.