KYIV: The US is making its offer of security guarantees for \u200ba peace deal in Ukraine conditional on Kyiv ceding all of the country\u2019s eastern region of Donbas to Russia, President Volodymyr Zelensky told Reuters in an interview. With the US focused on its own conflict with Iran, President Donald Trump is applying pressure to Ukraine in an effort to bring a quick end to the four-year war triggered by Russia\u2019s 2022 invasion, Zelensky said. \u201cThe Middle East definitely has an impact on President Trump, and I think on his next steps. President Trump, unfortunately, in my opinion, still chooses a strategy of putting more pressure on the Ukrainian side,\u201d he told Reuters.<\/p>\n
The US, Russia and Ukraine have held three rounds of high-level, trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi and Geneva this year in a bid to negotiate an end to Europe\u2019s bloodiest conflict since World War Two, which has laid waste to swaths of Ukraine and killed hundreds \u200cof thousands of people.<\/p>\n
The \u200cUkrainian leader has repeatedly said robust security guarantees from international partners are needed to ensure \u200bthat Russia \u200cdoes \u2060not restart \u200bhostilities \u2060in the future, after any peace deal is agreed.<\/p>\n
Two vital questions remained unresolved regarding security guarantees, Zelensky said: Who would help to fund Ukraine\u2019s weapons purchases to sustain its military deterrent, and how exactly would its allies respond in the face of any future Russian aggression?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Americans are prepared to finalize these guarantees at a high level once Ukraine is ready to withdraw from Donbas,\u201d said the 48-year-old leader, who added that he understood the \u201csubtleties\u201d of the American position although he had not participated directly himself in the trilateral talks. Russian President Vladimir Putin insists that control of the whole of Donbas is an essential element of his war aims, which Moscow would achieve on the battlefield if it could not do so at the negotiating table.<\/p>\n
But the pace \u2060of Russia\u2019s advance has been slow over the past two years. Military analysts say it could take \u200ca long time and a significant amount of manpower to conquer all of Donbas, \u200cwhich includes a so-called Fortress Belt of cities heavily fortified by the Ukrainian military. Zelensky warned that \u200ba withdrawal would compromise the security of both Ukraine and, by \u200cextension, Europe, by handing the region\u2019s strong defensive positions to Russia.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would very much like the American side to understand that the eastern \u200cpart of our country is part of our security guarantees,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Zelensky had said in January that a security guarantees document between Ukraine and the US was \u201c100 percent ready\u201d and waiting to be signed. On Tuesday, following weekend talks between US and Ukrainian officials in Miami, he said there was still work to be done.<\/p>\n
RUSSIA IS BETTING US WILL WALK AWAY, ZELENSKIY SAYS<\/p>\n
Speaking in a gilded meeting room at the \u200cpresidential offices in central Kyiv, Zelensky said Russia was betting Washington would lose interest if the peace talks stalled and would walk away. He acknowledged that there was some risk of this.<\/p>\n
A fourth round of \u2060trilateral talks due this month \u2060was postponed due to the Iran conflict.<\/p>\n
Zelensky questioned, however, whether Russia was willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands more soldiers in an effort to capture the area of Donbas it does not already control \u2014 roughly 6,000 square km. He repeated that a summit with Trump, Putin and himself was the only way to settle outstanding questions on territory and security guarantees to clinch a peace deal.<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian leader shrugged off past tensions between himself and Trump. \u201cI am not a box of chocolates or a car, to be liked or disliked by one person or another,\u201d he said. \u201cIn my opinion, the President of the United States looks at this more pragmatically, and he probably wants the war to end quickly. We also want to do so quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following heavy Russian bombardment of Ukrainian cities on Wednesday, Zelensky thanked the Trump administration for maintaining the supplies of Patriot missile defense systems, despite increased demand for these weapons because of the conflict in the Gulf.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian officials have previously expressed fears that shipments of US-made Patriots \u2014 the only missiles in Ukraine\u2019s arsenal capable of downing Russian ballistic missiles \u2014 would dry up because of the Iran conflict.<\/p>\n
\u201cDeliveries to us were not \u200bstopped. I\u2019m very grateful to President Trump, and to his team,\u201d \u200bZelensky said. \u201cBut this supply of Patriot missiles is not as large as we need.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Ukraine was making progress in its production of its own long-range missiles and drones, allowing it to strike deep within Russia in retaliation for Russian bombardment of Ukrainian cities, Zelensky said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KYIV: The US is making its offer of security guarantees for \u200ba peace deal in Ukraine conditional on Kyiv ceding all of the country\u2019s eastern region of Donbas to Russia, President Volodymyr Zelensky told Reuters in an interview. With the US focused on its own conflict with Iran, President Donald Trump is applying pressure to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":95440,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95405"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95441,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95405\/revisions\/95441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}