Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said his country is “working to mobilize a force of one million people equipped with Western weapons, whose task is to restore the southern regions controlled by Russia in the current war.”

“This question came from the very top of the political pyramid in Ukraine, where President Volodymyr Zelensky shows great enthusiasm for the restoration of the occupied territories bordering the Black Sea, because they are important for the country from an economic point of view,” Reznikov said in an interview with a British newspaper. The Times, noting that “Zelensky gave the go-ahead to the High Military Command to draw up plans to that effect before the latter had drawn conclusions about what would be required to implement those plans.”

On the other hand, Ukraine’s defense minister stated that his job is “to write letters to his counterparts in partner countries, and the generals to talk about why we need such weapons before we get political decisions.” He highly appreciated the help of his Western colleagues, “in particular, British Defense Minister Ben Wallace, in updating and improving the weapons of the Ukrainian army.”

However, Aleksei Reznikov criticized what he called “the slowness of the process of sending weapons to his country”.