Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he believes the war with Russia is “closer to the end” than many think and called on his allies to strengthen their militaries.
“I think we’re closer to peace than we think… We’re closer to the end of the war. We just have to be very strong,” he said in an excerpt from an interview with the show. Hello Americaof the American channel ABC News, which will be broadcast in full this Tuesday. Referring to the so-called “victory plan” that he intends to present this week to his American counterpart Joe Biden, he said that it was about “strengthening Ukraine”. “That is why we are asking our friends, our allies, to strengthen us. This is very important.
In his speech at the plenary session of the Future Summit held at the UN headquarters in New York, Zelensky called for mass participation in the meeting he is preparing in order to increase international pressure on Russia to end the war.
“I call on all leaders, all nations, to continue supporting our common efforts for a just and peaceful future,” Zelensky said in his speech, after explaining that the summit he hopes to hold at the end of the year should serve to garner support from as many countries as possible for his peace formula.
This Ukrainian initiative contains ten proposals to end the war and was already put on the table at the first summit in this regard promoted by Zelensky, which took place in Switzerland last June.
Nearly a hundred countries and international organizations, not including emerging powers such as India, China or Brazil, on which kyiv continues to count to force Russia to stop its aggression against Ukraine, have signed a statement supporting three of the ten points of the document (related to food and energy security and improving the humanitarian situation).
As Zelensky explained, at this second summit he hopes to address the rest of the points of his initiative.
The most ambitious demand of the Ukrainian peace formula calls for the withdrawal of Russian troops from all Ukrainian territories, including Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions seized by pro-Russian rebels in 2014 and then annexed to Russia.
Ukraine has announced that it is ready to invite Russia to the second peace summit, with the aim of forcing Moscow to accept commitments acceptable to kyiv through pressure from the participating countries.
