Zelenskiy says Ukraine must do everything to end war next year

KYIV — President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine must do all it can to ensure the war with Russia ends next year through diplomacy, commenting at a decisive moment after Donald Trump's US presidential election win and Russia's grinding battlefield gains.

However, Zelenskiy said Russian President Vladimir Putin was not interested in agreeing to a peace deal, and argued it was convenient for Moscow to sit down to talk while continuing to fight.

"From our side, we must do everything so that this war ends next year, ends through diplomatic means," Zelenskiy said in a Ukrainian radio interview aired on Saturday (Nov 16).

Moscow's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva said on Thursday that Russia would be open to negotiations to end the war if initiated by Trump, although he added that they would have to acknowledge "realities on the ground".

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

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

However, a return to Ukraine's internationally recognised 1991 borders was not mentioned in the president's "victory plan" that he publicly presented last month.

Zelenskiy said the war was likely to end quicker under Trump, who said often during his campaign that he would rapidly end the conflict, without giving specifics.

Zelenskiy said US law prevented him from meeting Trump before his inauguration on Jan 20.

"We will do everything that depends on us [to ensure a meeting]. We had a really good meeting in September," Zelenskiy said, adding he would only talk with Trump rather than any emissary or advisor.

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Situation in eastern Ukraine

Zelenskiy conceded that the situation in eastern Ukraine was difficult and Russia was making advances.

Russia's Defence Ministry said on Saturday its forces had captured two more villages in eastern Donetsk region — Makarivka, southwest of the key town of Kurakhove, and Hryhorivka, north of Kurakhove.

Ukraine's General Staff of the Armed Forces made no mention of either village, but acknowledged that the Kurakhove sector was the most heated theatre along the 1,000km front line.

Moscow's forces are bearing down on Kurakhove, which has a thermal power plant and is 7km from Pokrovsk, a large town which for much of the war has been one of Ukraine's logistical linchpins.

In eastern Ukraine, Russia is advancing at the fastest rate since the war's earliest days in 2022.

Zelenskiy said the situation was difficult for several reasons, one of which was hold-ups of up to a year in equipping brigades, partly because of months of delay by the US Congress last winter in approving Ukraine aid.

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

"In order to stop the Russian army, new reserves, kitted out with the equipment we have been waiting for so long, will now arrive," he said.

Ukraine has sought to boost its own weapons production. Zelenskiy said Ukraine was now making four different missiles, which he said were currently in testing.

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