Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the war with Russia could end sooner than some think.
“I think we are closer to peace than we think. We just have to be very strong, very strong,” he said.
Speaking to US television channel ABC News, Zelensky also said that the victory plan he will present to US President Joe Biden this week will require Ukraine’s allies to “strengthen” the Ukrainian military.
Zelensky said the plan was not aimed at negotiating with Russia, but rather at “opening a diplomatic path to end the war.”
He added that Ukraine can only push Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the conflict if kyiv comes from a “position of strength.”
On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was cautious about media reports of a Ukrainian plan and added that the conflict would end only when Russia’s goals were achieved.
Zelensky has long called on Western countries to allow Ukraine to ease restrictions on the use of long-range missiles that could be used to strike deep into Russia, and he is expected to do so again this week during his visit to the United States.
On Sunday, Biden said he had not yet decided whether to give Ukraine the green light. Zelensky said the United States should take the lead on the decision: “Everybody is looking to him (Biden), and we need that to defend ourselves,” he told ABC.
Zelensky will address the UN General Assembly on Wednesday and is also expected to meet with US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
Czech President Petr Pavel told the New York Times that Ukraine will have to be “realistic” about its prospects of regaining areas of the country’s east that Russia has managed to conquer during the past 31 months of war.
He added that the most likely outcome of the war was that part of Ukrainian territory would remain under Russian occupation for several years.
A defeat of Ukraine or Russia “is simply not going to happen,” Pavel told the Times, adding that the end of the conflict would be “somewhere in between.”
Zelensky’s trip to the United States comes as Ukraine continues to face sustained attacks from Russia.
On Monday evening, an attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Poltava damaged infrastructure, while in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia one person died and six others were injured as a result of “massive airstrikes.”
Russian troops have made serious advances in the east and are closing in on Vuhledar, a town south of the Donbass frontline that the Russians have been trying to take since the start of their full-scale invasion.
Ukrainian military expert and retired colonel Kostyantyn Mashovets warned his fellow Ukrainians that they must be “psychologically prepared” for the loss of Selydove, Toretsk and Vuhledar in Donbas.
“I wish I was wrong,” he wrote on Facebook.
“But based on the information I have… this is a very likely scenario of events that will occur in the near future.”
