AFU commander-in-chief Zaluzhnyi gave a big interview to journalist Komarov

Valeriy Zaluzhnyy, commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, told a special project by Dmytro Komarov "Year. Behind the Scenes" special project, what he remembered about the day when Russia started its full-scale invasion - 24 February 2022, when the war will end and what should be Ukraine's victory in it.

Talking about why the war started and that Zaluzhny said that the strategic goal of the Russian Federation was to destroy the Ukrainian statehood as such.

They probably hoped that they would come in organized columns, people would greet them with bread and salt, and that would be the end of Ukrainian statehood. When the Ukrainians started to resist, when they started to defend themselves, as of today they are deliberately coming here from the Russian Federation to deliberately kill Ukrainians, exactly to kill, and the essence of this war is that if we do not destroy this enemy now, we will be destroyed," he said.

He noted that Russia's preparations for a full-scale invasion were carried out comprehensively and involved all spheres of the Russian Armed Forces.

The operation was planned in great detail, even the groups of troops prepared for the offensive operations were changed several times. They considered the ratio and saw that such an option would not be suitable. A switch was made, and the next steps were planned," Zaluzhny said.

At the same time, he pointed out that the Russians were suffering "colossal" losses of manpower.

In particular, in the Donetsk operational direction and near Bakhmut. The only conclusion is that the cheapest thing this country has is human life. It is the cheapest thing there can be. In our country, on the contrary, it is the most expensive," the AFU commander-in-chief stressed.

Speaking about the first day of the war, the Commander-in-Chief recalled that for him February 24 was remembered by two curious moments.

The first moment was when I called each commander, to whom I either told him what had started, to which the commander replied "I understand", or the commander reported that some action was already taking place. It was very, very short. And I would say "Hang in there, you know what to do!" And the second point - at 5:00 in the morning I received a phone call from a person who was not very nice to me. This person asked for my forgiveness. That I remembered. What followed was the usual commander's work with sleepless nights," he said, and also promised to inform more in detail after the war about the call from the person who asked for forgiveness.

Zaluzhny stressed that there are many battles ahead, including for Crimea and Donbass.

We know what it takes to do that. We know what it takes to liberate Crimea, what it takes to liberate Donetsk and Luhansk regions, but this is a very, very large amount of work that cannot be done quickly," the commander-in-chief noted.

At the same time, he stressed that victory for Ukraine will come when it liberates all its territories.

Our victory is, unambiguously, the liberation of the entire occupied territory of Ukraine. The entire territory should be liberated, but this is not enough. Ukraine as a state must do everything so that everything that started on 24 February 2022 would never happen again... Ukraine must become such a state," Zaluzhnyy stressed.