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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has announced he is seeking an opportunity to end the war with Russia next year.
“In October, November and December we have a chance to move things toward peace and lasting stability,” he told the Ukraine-South East Europe summit in Dubrovnik.
“The situation on the battlefield creates an opportunity to make this choice for decisive action to end the war no later than in 2025.”
It comes as he called on southeastern European countries to invest in weapons production in Ukraine.
Overnight, the Ukrainian president said he had met with top commanders to call for a boost in domestic production of weaponry.
Mr Zelensky had also planned to present in full his “victory plan” to the US and Ukraine’s other allies next week during a meeting in Germany.
But that meeting had to be postponed after US president Joe Biden announced that he would be staying in the US due to the threat of hurricanes in Florida.
Russia says peace in Ukraine is impossible if Kyiv gets Nato membership
Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday that achieving a just peace in Ukraine would be impossible if Kyiv lost its neutrality by joining a bloc such as the US-led Nato military alliance.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has said peace talks can only begin if Kyiv agrees to abandon large swaths of territory claimed by Moscow and drops its bid to join Nato.
Zakharova, speaking about reports that the West was discussing an option in which Ukraine could join Nato in return for accepting Russian control over a swathe of Ukrainian territory, said that achieving a just peace in Ukraine would be impossible without ensuring that Ukraine‘s status was neutral and non-aligned.
Zakharova said that what Moscow calls the “special military operation” in Ukraine was a reaction to Nato’s eastward expansion.
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Source: independent.co.uk
