Ukraine's leader warns war will cost Russia for generations

Ukraine's president said Russia is trying to starve his country's cities into submission but warned Saturday that continuing the invasion would exact a toll on Russia for 'generations.' The remarks came after Moscow held a mass rally in support of its bogged-down forces.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused the Kremlin in an overnight video address of deliberately creating "a humanitarian catastrophe" and appealed again for Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet with him to prevent more bloodshed.

Noting that the 200,000 people reported to have attended the rally was similar to the number of Russian forces deployed to Ukraine, Zelensky said Friday's event in Moscow illustrated the stakes of the largest ground conflict in Europe since the Second World War.

"Picture for yourself that in that stadium in Moscow there are 14,000 dead bodies and tens of thousands more injured and maimed," the Ukrainian leader said, standing outside the presidential office in the capital, Kyiv. "Those are the Russian costs throughout the invasion."

Putin lavished praised on his country's military forces during Friday's flag-waving rally, which took place on the anniversary of Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. The event included patriotic songs such as "Made in the U.S.S.R.," with the opening lines "Ukraine and Crimea, Belarus and Moldova, it's all my country."