The Ukrainian national flag will return forever to the temporarily occupied territories, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said, speaking at the ceremony of raising the National Flag of Ukraine on Tuesday.

"The blue-yellow flag will fly in the temporarily occupied territories. It will always fly," he said.

"In Melitopol on Victory Square – there can't be a flag of those who will lose this war. In Kherson, there cannot be a flag of those who do not know what freedom is on Freedom Square," Zelensky said.

According to him, "it will be on the Azov Avenue in Berdiansk and Skadovsk, over the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant in Enerhodar and over Kakhovska hydroelectric power plant (HPP), on Adzhyholsky Lighthouse and on the Savur-Mohyla, on the banks of Siversky Donets, Kalmius, near the Oleshky sands – there cannot be a flag of those who hear these Ukrainian names for the first time."

"And in Crimea: in Yalta, Simferopol, Dzhankoi on Ai-Petri, there will be Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar flags. And no matter how someone would try to distort history, it is these flags that are historically connected with Crimea," the president said.