Zelenskyy says Ukraine must try to ensure the war ends next year through diplomacy

KYIV — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukraine must do everything it can to ensure the war with Russia ends next year through diplomacy, making comments at a crucial time after Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election and Russia’s crushing rise in the battlefield.

However, Zelenskyy said that Russian President Vladimir Putin was not interested in agreeing to a peace deal, arguing that it was convenient for Moscow to sit down to talk while they continued to fight.

“From our side, we must do everything for this war to end next year, end by diplomatic means,” Zelenskyy said in a Ukrainian radio interview broadcast on Saturday.

Moscow’s UN ambassador in Geneva said on Thursday that Russia would be open to talks to end the war if they were opened by Trump, although he added that these would have to recognize “the realities on the ground.”

Moscow uses this phrase to mean that Ukraine should cede four regions that Russian forces have partially occupied and that Russia has claimed in their entirety.

Zelenskyy has repeatedly said since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 that peace cannot be established until all Russian forces are driven out and all territory captured by Moscow, including Crimea, is returned.

However, a return to Ukraine’s internationally recognized 1991 borders was not mentioned in the president’s “victory plan” that he publicly presented last month.

Zelenskyy said the war was likely to end more quickly under Trump, who often said during his campaign that he would end the conflict quickly, without giving details.

Zelenskyy said US law prevented him from meeting Trump before his January 20 inauguration.

“We will do everything that depends on us (to secure a meeting). We had a very good meeting in September,” Zelenskyy said, adding that he would only talk to Trump himself instead of any envoy or adviser.

The situation in eastern Ukraine

Zelenskyy admitted that the situation in eastern Ukraine was difficult and Russia was making progress.

Moscow’s forces are currently striking Kurakhove, which has a thermal power plant and is only 4 miles from Pokrovsk, a large city which for much of the war has been one of Ukraine’s logistical hubs.

On the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, Russia is now advancing at the fastest rate since the earliest days of the war in 2022.

Zelenskyy said the situation was difficult for several reasons, one of which was up to a year’s worth of delays in equipping brigades, due in part to months of delay by the US Congress last winter in approving Ukraine’s aid.

However, he said some of these brigades would now enter the fray.

“To stop the Russian army, new reserves will now arrive, equipped with the equipment we have been waiting for so long,” he said.

Ukraine has tried to increase its own weapons production to reduce dependence on allies. Zelenskyy said Ukraine was now making four different missiles, which he said were currently being tested.