In a wide-ranging interview, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Sky News he is ready to meet Vladimir Putin for talks and will do anything to bring about peace.
He said the US has the power to end the war – but must exert greater pressure on Moscow.
“The United States even more stronger than they think about themselves. And I think so really. And they really have pressure on Putin. They can stop this war.”
But he urged the administration in Washington to tighten sanctions against the families of Russia’s leadership and to provide Ukraine with more advanced weapons, arguing that only increased pressure would force Moscow to take negotiations seriously.
On the question of how close Ukraine is to reaching peace he says there is a window between now and the American midterm elections in November.
“Now I think that we have a chance. Between us, what I really think about next year… it depends on these months, if we will have a chance to finish the war before autumn. Before elections, important, influential, elections in the United States. If it will be possible to achieve a peace, we will have, now we have this window.”
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I spoke to him for an hour at the presidential buildings in Kyiv about what Ukraine needs now – and what must happen for the war to end.
More than four years after Russia launched its botched full-scale invasion, the toll on the country – and on him and his family – is unmistakable.
As we walked through near darkness to the room where the sit-down interview was held, he spoke about the strain of rolling power cuts and entire regions enduring temperatures as low as -40 degrees without reliable heating.
When I asked whether Ukraine could win the war, his answer was equivocal.
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“It depends what people mean when they say, to win. And, really it’s very difficult to speak about territories. First of all how to get back all of the land for today, it’s very difficult. And it will be too much losses (of) people lives… But what is good that Russia also can’t do it on the battlefield. So that’s why they’re not winning and we are not losing.”
But on the question of surrendering the fortress cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, he was unequivocal – that would be a red line.
“It’s our territory and it sounds unbelievably strange why we have to withdraw from our land? Why they occupied it, our land and nobody can push them out.”
“If we will withdraw from this territory, like you said, for example, Sloviansk at the very moment, at this very moment, 200,000 people who are there now will be occupied by the Russians, who said to Russia that these people are ready to be Russian people? And if they don’t, they will kill them or push to the front or push to the prison.”
Zelenskyy also spoke openly about his relationship with Donald Trump, describing it as “not simple” but stressed that Ukraine’s relationship went beyond “personalities”.
