Ukrainian infantrymen train with a BMP-2 amphibious infantry fighting vehicle at an undisclosed location near the Bakhmut front, in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, 27 February 2025. Photo: EPA / Maria Senovilla
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Sunday that Vladimir Putin started World War II when he launched Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and that the only way to stop it escalating into a global conflict was through sustained pressure on Moscow.
“I believe that Putin has already started [World War III],” Zelensky said in an interview with the BBC. “The question is how much territory he will be able to seize and how to stop him.”
“Russia wants to impose on the world a different way of life and change the lives people have chosen for themselves,” the Ukrainian president continued, stressing that Ukraine was the “outpost” stopping Moscow from turning the war into a “broader, full-scale” global conflict.
Despite complaining earlier this month that US President Donald Trump was pressuring him to accept a peace deal that would see Ukraine hand over the entirity of its eastern Donbas region to Russia, Zelensky said that such a concession would mean “abandoning hundreds of thousands of our people who live there”, and would not stop Putin from attacking his neighbours again in a few years time.
“Where would he go next? We do not know, but that he would want to continue [the war] is a fact,” Zelensky said.
Zelensky had previously suggested that the question of ceding land to Russia as part of a deal to end the war could be put to Ukrainians in a nationwide referendum, which could be accompanied by a general election.
While the Ukrainian president gave the BBC no concrete answer about whether or not he’d run again, saying just that he “might run and might not” run in the next election, he stressed that Kyiv needed security guarantees from the US to protect its population before it could hold a vote.
He also insisted that, despite the difficulty of winning them back on the battlefield, it was only a “matter of time” before Ukraine regained control of its territories currently occupied by Russian forces.
“To do it today would mean losing a huge number of people — millions of people — because the [Russian] army is large, and we understand the cost of such steps,” Zelensky said, adding that “Ukraine's victory is the preservation of our independence, and a victory of justice for the whole world is the return of all our lands.”
