- ‘The war will end, but there is no set date,’ the Ukrainian leader says
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed on Friday that his country’s war with Russia will “end sooner” after President-elect Donald Trump’s win last week.
Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump and his running-mate, Sen. JD Vance, have vowed to end the Ukraine–Russia conflict, saying that the United States has provided too much funding to the Eastern European country and has warned about the specter of nuclear war amid the conflict.
“A just peace is critical for us, so that we do not feel we have lost the best only to have injustice forced upon us,” Zelenskyy told a Ukrainian news outlet on Friday, according to a translation. “The war will end, but there is no set date.
“Of course, with the policy of this team, who will now govern the White House, the war will be over sooner. This is their approach, their pledge to their society, and it is really essential to them.”
Zelenskyy said that his speculation is based on conversations that he has had with Trump.
On whether Trump will push for Ukraine to negotiate with Russia, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine is “an independent country” in which “the approach of ‘sit down and listen’ does not work.”
Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said on Friday that Ukraine is fighting to liberate all territory captured by Russia in the past decade such as the Donbas territories and Crimea.
“Territorial integrity is part of our values,” the Ukrainian minister told a joint press conference with his Norwegian counterpart in Oslo.
When asked about reports that Ukraine is shifting its focus in the war, Umerov said the reports are false and alleged they’re part of Russian propaganda efforts.
“Our priority is still to protect people, protect the nation, to liberate people from almost 10 years of temporary occupation, so Crimea and Donbas [are] part of Ukraine,” he said.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for the first time since December 2022 on Friday, according to a call detailed by state-run Russian outlet TASS. A German government spokesperson said Scholz urged Putin to begin talks with Kyiv that would open the way for a “just and lasting peace.”
In a one-hour phone conversation, Scholz demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine and reaffirmed Germany’s continued support for Ukraine, the German spokesman said.
In a statement provided by TASS about the call, the Kremlin said Putin “noted that the Russian side has never refused and remains open to the resumption of the negotiations that were interrupted by the Kiev regime.”
“Russia’s proposals are well known and outlined, in particular, in a June speech at the Russian Foreign Ministry,” it said.
Berlin, which had previously relied on Russian gas before the war erupted in February 2022, is a major Ukrainian financial backer and its largest provider of weapons after the United States, whose future support for Kyiv appears uncertain following Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election this month.
Germany was heavily reliant on Russian gas before the war, but direct shipments ceased when the Nord Stream pipelines under the Baltic Sea were blown up in 2022. U.S. officials have not announced who carried out the pipeline bombing.
Since the war began, Germany and other European Union countries have imposed successive waves of sanctions on Russia and taken steps to wean themselves off their dependence on Russian oil and gas.
In the meantime, outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this week that the United States intends to shore up support for Ukraine in the final two months of the Biden administration and before Trump officially takes office.
Washington will “continue to shore up everything we’re doing for Ukraine to make sure that it can effectively defend itself against this Russian aggression,” Blinken told reporters at the NATO headquarters in Brussels.
During an interview over the weekend, national security adviser Jake Sullivan offered a similar pledge for U.S. aid to Kyiv.
President Joe Biden, he told CBS News, “will have the opportunity over the next 70 days to make the case to the Congress and to the incoming administration that the United States should not walk away from Ukraine, that walking away from Ukraine means more instability in Europe.”
“If we walk away from Ukraine in Europe, the question about America’s commitment to our allies in Asia will grow,” he said.
Reuters, Epoch Times contributed to this report.
