Kyiv backs ‘fair peace’ despite calls for quick solution
Zelensky warns Russia could intensify attacks, while urging China to join Swiss peace summit
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned Russia could intensify its offensive and said Kyiv would only accept a “fair peace” despite the West’s calls for a quick solution.
Zelensky also repeated pleas for allies to send more air defence and fighter jets and said the “biggest advantage” for Russia was a ban on Ukraine using Western-donated weapons to strike Russian territory.
With a mobilisation law due to come into force yesterday, he admitted issues with staffing and “morale” in Ukrainian ranks, which have been often outgunned and outmanned as the third year of the war grinds on.
While Russian troops have made gradual advances in recent months, it has seen larger gains along the northeastern border in an offensive that began on May 10 in Kharkiv region.
But Zelensky said on Friday that Ukraine would hold its defensive lines and stop any major Russian breakthrough.
“No one is going to give up,” said Zelensky, who has been the face of Ukraine’s resistance against Russia since the invasion began in February 2022.
Zelensky also rejected French President Emmanuel Macron’s call for an Olympic truce during the Paris Games, saying it would hand an “advantage” to Moscow by giving it time to move around troops and artillery.
He said Ukraine and its Western allies had the “same values” but often “different views”, particularly on what the end of the conflict might look like.
“We are in a nonsense situation where the West is afraid that Russia will lose the war. And it does not want Ukraine to lose it,” Zelensky said.
“Everyone wants to find some model for the war to end faster,” he said, when asked about the possibility of a scenario for ending hostilities like the one that established a dividing line on the Korean peninsula.
The president urged China and countries from the developing world to attend a peace summit, with dozens of leaders being hosted by neutral Switzerland next month to which Russia has not been invited.
Chinese leaders believed that “if Russia loses the war … it is a victory for the United States”, Zelensky said.
“It’s a victory for the West, and they want to find a balance between the two … That’s why I would like to see China involved in the peace summit.”
Uncertainty surrounds the presence of China, which has said “a lot of work” would need to be done before the conference.
The 46-year-old former comedian wore one of his trademark khaki outfits for the interview in Kyiv – his first with foreign media since the start of Russia’s Kharkiv region offensive.
“We want the war to end with a fair peace for us”, while “the West wants the war to end. Period. As soon as possible. And for them, this is a fair peace”, he said.
Zelensky said the situation in the Kharkiv region, where thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes, was “controlled” but “not stabilised”.
An AFP estimate based on data from the Institute for the Study of War showed Russian forces had advanced more than 278 square kilometres in their offensive – their biggest gains in a year and a half.
Zelensky said Russian troops had penetrated between five to 10 kilometres along the northeastern border before being stopped by Ukrainian forces. Russia’s offensive “could consist of several waves. There was the first wave” in Kharkiv region, he said.
Zelensky played down Russia’s gains in the offensive so far but added: “We have to be sober and understand that they are going deeper into our territory. Not vice versa. And that’s still their advantage.”
Speaking about the offensive during a visit to China on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said it was a response to Ukraine shelling border regions.
“I said publicly that if this continues, we will be forced to create a security zone,” he said.
When asked whether Russia planned to capture the city of Kharkiv, which has over a million inhabitants, Putin said: “As for Kharkiv, there are no such plans as of today.”