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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday (August 27) that the war with Russia will eventually end with dialogue, but Kiev must be in a strong position and he will present a plan to US President Joe Biden and his two potential successors.
Ukrainian leaders told a news conference that Kiev’s invasion of Russia’s Kursk region three weeks ago was part of that plan, but that it also included other moves on the economic and diplomatic fronts.
“The main purpose of the plan is to force Russia to end the war. I very much hope for this – (it is) fair for Ukraine,” he told reporters in Kiev, referring to the war sparked by a full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.
He did not further detail next steps but said he would also discuss the plan with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, one of the two candidates in the U.S. presidential election, and possibly Republican Donald Trump.
Zelensky said he hopes to travel to the United States in September to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York and is ready to meet with Biden.
His comments suggest he sees the main potential forum for negotiations as a follow-up international peace summit, to which Ukraine has said it wants Russia to be represented.
The first summit to advance Kyiv’s peace vision, held in Switzerland in June, explicitly excluded Russia and, while attracting dozens of delegations, did not include a delegation from China, the world’s second-largest economy, despite Kyiv’s efforts to win support from the Global South.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on August 19 that negotiations were no longer possible after Ukraine launched a large-scale cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region on August 6.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who visited Kyiv last week, spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday and expressed his support for an early peaceful resolution to the conflict in Ukraine.
“No compromise with Putin”
Zelensky insisted Russia wants to impose conditions on Ukraine in any solution to the war, which Kiev considers unacceptable.
Putin said any deal would be conditional on Ukraine accepting the “reality” that Russia would own four Ukrainian regions and most of Crimea. Ukraine now says it controls more than 1,200 square kilometers of Russia’s Kursk region.
“There can be no compromise with Putin, today’s dialogue is in principle empty and meaningless because he does not want to end the war diplomatically,” Zelensky said at a press conference.
He said the offensive on the Kursk region had reduced the number of governments around the world calling on Ukraine to compromise with Russia, end the war and give up large tracts of territory.
On the battlefield, Zelensky mocked Putin, saying he prioritized seizing Ukrainian land over defending Russia’s own territory.
He noted that Ukraine claimed to have captured 100 settlements in the Kursk region, while Russian troops continued to slowly advance in the eastern Donetsk region.
The Ukrainian leader also said Kiev continued to make progress in domestic weapons production and had conducted the first test of a domestically produced ballistic missile.
Read more by Euractiv
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