Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday his country was “10 percent” away from a “peace deal” with Russia, but the most important issues still remained to be decided and warned against a deal that would reward Moscow.
In his New Year’s speech, the president said Ukraine wanted to end the war, but not “at any cost,” and that any deal must include strong security guarantees to deter Russia from invading its territory again.
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“The peace agreement is 90% ready, 10% remains. And this goes far beyond simple numbers,” Zelensky said in the video message posted on his Telegram account.
“It is these 10% who will determine the fate of peace, the fate of Ukraine and Europe,” he added.
The United States attempted to reach a peace deal with input from Moscow and kyiv, but failed to achieve a breakthrough on the central territorial issue.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking full control of Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region as part of the deal, but Zelensky said in his speech that he did not think Russia would stop there if Ukraine withdrew.
Russia occupies about 20% of Ukraine and kyiv has said ceding that territory would only embolden Moscow.
“’Withdraw from Donbass and it will all be over.’ This is what deception looks like when translating from Russian into Ukrainian, into English, into German, into French and, in fact, into any language of the world,” Zelensky said.
The Ukrainian leader spoke hours after U.S. officials, including special envoy Steve Witkoff, spoke with Ukrainian and European security advisers about next steps to end the four-year conflict.
The war has unleashed an avalanche of destruction that has displaced millions of people and reduced entire cities across Ukraine to rubble.
Putin urged his compatriots to believe in victory during his New Year’s message. Addressing the soldiers, whom he called “heroes,” Putin said: “We believe in you and in our victory. »
The Kremlin said this week it would “harden” its negotiating position on ending the war, after accusing Ukraine of launching drones against Putin’s residence in the Novgorod region.
Moscow called the action a “terrorist attack” against Putin.
However, the U.S. Institute for the Study of War, which documents the conflict in Ukraine, said Tuesday that it had not seen “images or reports typically seen after Ukrainian attacks to corroborate the Kremlin’s claims.”
Putin has not commented publicly on the attack, although the Kremlin said Putin briefed Trump on what happened in a phone call.
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