While four Western leaders arrived in Kyiv today, Saturday, to show solidarity with Ukraine on the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, which has cost tens of thousands of lives and ravaged the country’s economy, Taras Ostapchuk told the Bulletin “Today is two years from the begin (sic) the war, I wish, for Ukraine and all free world victory very soon”.
Ostapchuk, a Ukrainian yacht engineer, hit the headlines in Mallorca and across the world just days after the invasion, when he attempted to sink the Russian-owned super yacht on which he worked in Puerto Adriano.
Before he left Mallorca he said that he was so horrified by a missile attack on an apartment building in his home country by Russian forces, that he attempted to sink the yacht, Lady Anastasia in Puerto Adriano, which is, or was, reputedly owned by a Russian arms dealer.
He allegedly opened various valves aboard the yacht which is valued at more than seven million euros. The yacht suffered severe damage to its engine room.
"The missile hit an apartment block very similar to the one where I live in Ukraine," he said. He went on to say that after seeing this he decided to take his revenge on the Russian owner of the vessel where has has worked for the last 10 years.
Taras, who was released after being held for 36 hours by the Guardia Civil, immediately returned to Ukraine where he enlisted in the army and has since been based in Kyiv.
And , while he fights on, the prime ministers of Italy, Canada and Belgium - Giorgia Meloni, Justin Trudeau and Alexander De Croo - travelled with the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, on an overnight train from neighbouring Poland.
When Russian tanks and infantry streamed across the border before dawn on Feb. 24, 2022, Ukraine's 40 million people defied expectations - and the Kremlin's best-laid plans - by holding them back and preventing a widely predicted defeat.
But as the war enters its third year, setbacks on the eastern front have left the Ukraine army looking vulnerable.
Seeking to maintain Western focus on Ukraine, even as the war between Israel and Hamas dominates headlines, Zelenskiy has warned that Russia, led by President Vladimir Putin, may not stop at Ukraine's borders if it emerges victorious.
Putin dismisses such claims as nonsense. He casts the war as a wider struggle with the United States, which the Kremlin elite says aims to cleave Russia apart. The West sees the invasion as an unjustified act of aggression that must be repelled.
And Taras is in the thick of it.
“I am fine, my main priority is defending Kyiv, protecting Ukraine and defeating the Russians. Life in Kyiv is gradually getting back to normal. I no longer care what happens in Mallorca, my work there is finished.”