The Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky, said this Saturday that the rebellion of the Wagner mercenary group against the Russian army and authorities reveals the “weakness” of Russia and the self-destructive drift that the country would have taken when launching its large-scale invasion. Ukrainian scale.

“Russia’s weakness is evident,” Zelensky said in his first public reaction to events in the neighboring country. “The longer Russia keeps her troops and her mercenaries on our lands, the more chaos, pain and problems it will create for itself,” added the Ukrainian head of state.

Zelensky accused Russian President Vladimir Putin, without mentioning him by name, of “choosing the path of evil” and “destroying myself” in doing so.

“He sends columns of soldiers to destroy lives in other countries and cannot stop them from fleeing and betraying him when they meet with resistance,” Zelensky wrote in his note, posted on Telegram.

“He despises the people and sends hundreds of thousands to war to end up hiding in a barricade near Moscow from those he himself armed,” Zelensky said, referring to the Wagner group, which is carrying out its uprising after having gained power from his starring role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Following Putin’s speech on the rebellion, in which he compared Wagner’s attempt to the Bolshevik Revolution that rocked Russia in 1917 when it was fighting in World War I, Zelensky said that the current course of the Russian Federation can only lead to a horizon similar to that of then.

“We maintain our strength, our unity,” Zelensky concluded his message. “All our commanders and all our soldiers know what they have to do,” stressed the president of Ukraine.