Air raid sirens blared in the capital, but strikes did not land. A recorded concert played in a bomb shelter. And at a golden-domed monastery, a solemn ceremony honoured soldiers and prayed for their victory. Ukrainians marked their Independence Day — and the six-month mark since the start of Russia’s invasion — with quiet resolve on Wednesday, as a feared escalation of attacks by Moscow did not immediately materialise, and President Volodymyr Zelensky pledged to prevail in the war.

In a defiant, slickly produced speech standing before burned and destroyed Russian tanks on a central avenue of the capital — pre-recorded for security reasons — Zelensky said Ukraine was a nation “reborn” in conflict with a renewed sense of cultural and political identity, now wholly separate from Russia, and one that has united democracies with a new sense of purpose.

Aiming his remarks as much at foreign donors as at his domestic audience, the address was Zelensky’s latest attempt to urge his nation to hold on, as tens of thousands of soldiers huddled in trenches across a 2,414-km front line scarred by blasted-out towns.

“Every new day is a new reason not to give up,” he said. “Because, having gone through so much, we have no right not to reach the end. What is the end of the war for us? We used to say, ‘Peace.’ Now we say, ‘Victory.’”

Mass gatherings were prohibited in the capital, Kyiv, as the US and others warned that Russia could intensify missile strikes to coincide with Independence Day, which commemorates Ukraine’s 1991 separation from the Soviet Union. By late afternoon, cluster munitions had struck in the Kharkiv region in northeastern Ukraine, wounding two civilians, and missiles hit near the central Ukrainian town of Poltava, officials said. It was a baseline level of Russian long-range fire into Ukraine in recent weeks, not the intensification that the country had braced for.

Ukrainians appeared determined not to let Russia’s war spoil their holiday. Perhaps the most visible sign of Kyiv’s resolve was the backdrop that Zelensky chose for his address: the column of wrecked Russian tanks and artillery on display along Kyiv’s central thoroughfare.

In Russia, state media did not carry prominent mentions of the six-month mark. Russia’s defence minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, said that Moscow intended to slow its military campaign in Ukraine to reduce civilian casualties. “We are doing this deliberately,” he said. The Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it was sending nearly $3 billion in weapons and equipment previously approved by Congress.

(New York Times News Service)