Annmarie Hordern and Daryna Krasnolutska | Bloomberg News (TNS)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Donald Trump should come forward with his plan to quickly end the war with Russia, warning that any proposal must avoid violating the nation’s sovereignty.
“If Trump knows how to finish this war, he should tell us today,” Zelenskyy said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Kyiv on Wednesday. “If there are risks to Ukrainian independence, if we lose statehood – we want to be ready for this, we want to know.”
The former U.S. president, who leads in polls over President Joe Biden ahead of the November election, has boasted that he’ll end the war by the time he’s inaugurated in January. In the televised debate last week, Trump decried the billions of dollars spent on Ukraine’s defense, saying that Kyiv is “not winning the war.”
In a nearly hour-long interview, the Ukrainian leader lamented the delays in weapons deliveries from Western allies and said he was “potentially ready” to meet with Trump to hear his team’s proposals.
“They can’t plan my life and life of our people and our children,” he said. “We want to understand whether in November we will have the powerful support of the U.S., or will be all alone.”
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Zelenskyy pushed back on the notion that Ukrainian and Russian forces are in a deadlock on the battlefield, saying that the military is better positioned in terms of manpower than it was months ago and a new offensive is a matter of arming its brigades.
And while he lauded the $61 billion assistance package approved by the U.S. Congress this year — after a six-month long delay — he said the military equipment was taking too long to make it to the front.
“This is the biggest tragedy of this war, that between the decision and real fact, we have real long, long, long wait,” Zelenskyy said.
The Ukrainian leader also said China could play a “tremendous role” in resolving the conflict, since Moscow is so dependent on its market for exports. He suggested that the U.S. and China, should they put aside differences, could act together to end the war.
(With assistance from Volodymyr Verbianyi and Olesia Safronova.)
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