KYIV, Aug 25 – President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday Ukraine will take the war to the Russian territory, adding the country has developed a new jet engine drone that may target most of Russia’s military airfields.

“Those who seek to sow evil on our land will reap its fruits on their own soil,” Zelenskyy said in his address marking Ukraine’s 33rd Independence Day. “And those who sought to turn our lands into a buffer zone should now worry that their own country doesn’t become a buffer federation. This is how independence responds.”

Few details were given about the jet engine propelled drone, known as Palianytsia, named after a loaf of rustic Ukrainian wheat bread. But Zelenskyy’s suggestion that most of Russian airfields are in range indicates it may hit targets within 600 km distance.

The jet engine will propel Palianytsia at a speed comparable with a cruise missile, effectively overcoming a major shortcoming of other Ukrainian long-range drones that fly at slow speed.

Marking the Independence Day, social media was flooded with messages of gratitude and support as Ukrainians greeted each other from around the country and thanked soldiers who are on the front lines.

“Independence is the silence we experience when we lose our people,” Zelenskyy said. “Independence descends into the shelter during an air raid, only to endure and rise again and again to tell the enemy: ‘You will achieve nothing.’”

In the capital of Kyiv, people who had traveled from various regions of the nation paraded in festive “vyshyvankas,” shirts of many colors enhanced with adornments, including the traditional white shirt with red embroidery. Some posed for pictures in front of the country’s blue-and-yellow flag and an “I Love Ukraine” sign that had been placed near a makeshift memorial to fallen soldiers.

Ukraine declared independence from the former Soviet Union on Aug. 24, 1991. Russia launched a full-scale invasion on the country on Feb. 24, 2022. More than 11,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the conflict, according to the United Nations, which has indicated that the toll could be higher. In February, the war’s second anniversary, Zelenskyy had said that 35,000 soldiers had been killed.

Zelenskyy recorded his address to the nation in the northeastern town of Sumy, near Russia’s Kursk region where Ukrainian forces made a surprise incursion earlier this month. The move marked a startling turn to the war and added a new front.

Ukraine quickly seized considerable Russian territory, including scores of small towns, and captured hundreds of Russian soldiers, part of an effort to counter Russia’s grinding advances in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

The military now claims to hold 1,200 square kilometers (480 square miles) of territory, and in the past week, has launched drone attacks on strategic bridges and on Russian airfields and drone bases. (ap/ez)