Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told ABC News on Monday that the war in Ukraine was “closer to an end” than many believe and renewed his call on Kyiv’s Western allies to further strengthen their military assistance to the country.
Speaking to the US broadcaster alongside his wife, Olena Zelenska, during a visit to New York, Zelensky said that his much anticipated victory plan, which he is due to present to US President Joe Biden, Congress and both US presidential candidates later this week, involved the “strengthening of Ukraine”.
“That’s why we’re asking our friends, our allies, to strengthen us. It’s very important,” Zelensky said, adding, “I think we are closer to peace than we think. We are closer to the end of the war. We just need to be very strong.”
Zelensky appealed specifically to the US and UK governments to lift their restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range missile strikes against military targets deep inside Russia, something that Vladimir Putin has warned would effectively put NATO at war with Russia.
Arguing that Ukraine had to be in a position of strength to push Putin to end the war, Zelensky said that the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s recent offensive in Russia’s southwestern Kursk region had made Putin “afraid”, as it had allowed Russians to see that “he can’t defend all his territory”.
Zelensky is scheduled to attend a UN Security Council meeting in New York on Tuesday before addressing the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, after which he is expected to continue to Washington for further high-level meetings.
Kyiv’s recent focus on how the war in Ukraine might end was also taken up by Czech President Petr Pavel in an interview with The New York Times on Monday, in which the pro-Ukrainian former NATO general cautioned that Ukraine would “have to be realistic” about its prospects of recovering territory occupied by Russia.
“The most probable outcome of the war,” Pavel said, “will be that a part of Ukrainian territory will be under Russian occupation, temporarily,” though he went on to concede that the occupation could, in fact, last years.
“To talk about a defeat of Ukraine or defeat of Russia, it will simply not happen,” Pavel told The New York Times, adding that the war’s ending would therefore “be somewhere in between.”