Zelenskiy says Ukraine must try to ensure war with Russia ends next year through diplomacy

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said his country must do all it can to ensure the war with Russia ends next year through diplomacy.
In a radio interview aired on Saturday, Mr Zelenskiy conceded that the battlefield situation in eastern Ukraine was difficult and Russia was making advances.
He said his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin was not interested in agreeing to a peace deal.
Mr Zelenskiy said US legislation prevented him from meeting president-elect Donald Trump before his inauguration next January. The Ukrainian leader said he would only talk to Mr Trump himself rather than any emissary or adviser.
“I, as the president of Ukraine, will only take seriously a conversation with the president of the United States of America, with all due respect to any entourage, to any people,” he said. “From our side, we must do everything so that this war ends next year, ends through diplomatic means.”
Mr Zelenskiy said the war was likely to end quicker under Mr Trump, who said often during his campaign that he would rapidly stop the conflict, without giving specifics.
Moscow’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva said on Thursday that Russia would be open to negotiations on an end to the war if they were initiated by Mr Trump, although he added that these would have to acknowledge “realities on the ground”.
Russia uses this phrase to mean Ukraine would have to cede four regions that Mr Putin’s forces have partly occupied and have claimed in their entirety.
Mr Zelenskiy has repeatedly said since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 that peace cannot be established until all Russian forces are expelled and all territory captured by Moscow, including Crimea, is returned. However, a return to Ukraine’s internationally recognised 1991 borders was not mentioned in the president’s “victory plan” that he presented last month.
Meanwhile, US president Joe Biden is expected to use his final meeting with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to urge him to dissuade North Korea from increasing its support for Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The talks on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru come just over two months before Mr Biden makes way for Mr Trump. It will be Mr Biden’s last check-in with Mr Xi – someone the Democrat saw as his most consequential peer on the world stage.
Officials say Mr Biden will be looking for Mr Xi to step up Chinese engagement to prevent an already dangerous moment with North Korea from further escalating.
On Friday, Mr Biden, South Korean president Yoon Seok Yul and Japan’s prime ministe, Shigeru Ishiba, condemned North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s decision to send thousands of troops to help Moscow repel Ukrainian forces who have seized territory in Russia’s Kursk border region. Mr Biden called it “dangerous and destabilising co-operation”.
White House officials also have expressed frustration with Beijing, which accounts for the vast majority of North Korea’s trade, for not doing more to rein in Pyongyang. – Reuters/AP
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