Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed his willingness to discuss a plan to end the war with Russia with former US President Donald Trump.
– Let’s talk to him and give him the opportunity to show him the steps in his recipe for peace. I’m ready. Of course, if he has a specific peace plan, maybe he will share it with me, Zelensky said in an interview with Fox News.
At the same time, he emphasized in advance that he would not consider any initiatives calling on Kiev to return Crimea and other annexed regions of Ukraine to Russia as a peace plan.
Zelensky seeks contact with Trump
The Ukrainian president’s office has begun arranging direct talks between Zelensky and Trump after the Republican Party, to which the former US president belongs, effectively blocked financial and military aid to Ukraine.
In mid-November, the Ukrainian delegation arrived in Washington to, among other things, establish contacts with Trump and negotiate approval for aid in the US House of Representatives. The Pentagon emphasizes that without a decision by Congress, further military support to Kiev will not be possible.
Trump, who plans to run for president in 2024, has repeatedly said that if he were Joe Biden today, he would negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine within 24 hours. At the same time, he did not rule out that Ukraine would have to give up part of its territory in exchange for peace.
Zelensky disagreed and invited Trump to come to Ukraine and see the ongoing war up close. – If he manages to get here, it will take me 24 minutes to explain to Trump that he cannot handle this war. It is impossible to achieve peace because of Putin, the Ukrainian president said.
Trump responded that he had great respect for Zelensky while refusing to visit Kiev, explaining that he did not want to create a “conflict of interest” because the Biden administration is cooperating with Ukrainian authorities.
Invasion of Ukraine
By attacking Ukraine, Vladimir Putin sparked the largest armed conflict in Europe since the end of World War II and imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia from the United States, the European Union and other Western countries.
Last year around September and October Russia announced the annexation of four Ukrainian oblasts: Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye. Previously, pseudo-referendums were organized there under the barrels of Russian guns, the results of which were determined in advance in Moscow.
For Russia, the war is a ‘special military operation’
Russia calls its actions against Ukraine not a war, but a “special military operation” and demands that Kiev “demilitarize and denazify” the country and recognize Crimea, annexed in 2014, as Russian.
After failing to capture Kiev early in the war, Russian forces focused on gaining full control of Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts, which together form a region called Donbas. Parts of it were already controlled by Moscow-backed separatists before Putin ordered his troops to attack all of Ukraine.
The Russian invasion is the next phase in the conflict that has been going on since 2014. The war was preceded by the Maidan Revolution and the so-called Crimean Crisis, which led to the annexation of the peninsula by Russia.
Source: Do Rzeczy
Roy Brown is a renowned economist and author at The Nation View. He has a deep understanding of the global economy and its intricacies. He writes about a wide range of economic topics, including monetary policy, fiscal policy, international trade, and labor markets.
