•Volodymyr Zelensky, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday he would carry on fighting in Ukraine if a peace deal cannot be reached, as Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky arrived for a meeting with allies in Paris.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who will co-host the meeting of European leaders today, said that Europe was ready to offer Ukraine security guarantees as soon as a peace deal was agreed, reports AFP.
Progress towards settling the three-and-a-half-year war appears to have stalled despite a flurry of diplomatic efforts by US President Donald Trump, who met both his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts last month.
Putin’s troops have kept up their strikes across the country, firing more than 500 drones and missiles at Ukraine overnight and killing nine in attacks on a frontline town.
The Russian leader hailed his forces’ progress, saying they were advancing on “all fronts” and had hobbled Ukraine’s army so much it could no longer mount an offensive.
“Let’s see how the situation develops,” Putin told reporters in Beijing, where he had earlier attended a grand military parade alongside China’s Xi Jinping and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
If there was no peace deal, he said, “then we will have to resolve all our tasks militarily”.
Zelensky will meet European leaders today who have been trying to frame security guarantees and agree to a peacekeeping force to protect Ukraine in the event of a peace deal.
The Ukrainian president said as he arrived in Paris he had not yet seen any signs from Russia that they wanted to end the war.
Nevertheless, Macron said preparations had been completed for security guarantees during a meeting of defence ministers but added that the details were “extremely confidential”.
Trump said he would be speaking to Zelensky today.
“I’m having a conversation with him very shortly and I’ll know pretty much what we’re going to be doing,” Trump told our reporter in the Oval Office yesterday.
‘Aggressive goals’
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier yesterday he was still seeking international recognition that the parts of Ukraine annexed and occupied by its forces belong to Moscow.
Russia claims to have annexed five Ukrainian regions — Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, as well as the Crimean peninsula, which it seized in 2014.
“In order for a durable peace, the new territorial realities that arose… must be recognised and formalised in accordance with international law,” Lavrov said in remarks published by Moscow yesterday.
Who gets control of land captured by Russia in its offensive is a key sticking point in stalled peace talks.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga blasted Russia for tabling “old ultimatums”.
“Russia has not changed its aggressive goals and shows no signs of readiness for meaningful negotiations,” he said, adding: “It’s time to hit the Russian war machine with severe new sanctions and sober Moscow up.”
Ukraine’s industrial east has been decimated by more than a decade of fighting that erupted when armed Russian-backed separatists began a push to break away from Kyiv following the country’s pro-European revolution in 2014.
Frontline attacks
Ukraine has been calling for Putin to meet Zelensky for face-to-face talks for months, saying it is the only way to break the deadlock.
But Putin again ruled out an immediate meeting and said he had invited Zelensky to come to Moscow if he wanted to speak.
“Donald (Trump) asked me for such a meeting, I said: ‘Yes, it’s possible, let Zelensky come to Moscow’,” Putin said.
Kyiv has dismissed the invitation as cynical.
“Putin continues to mess around with everyone by making knowingly unacceptable proposals,” Sybiga said, adding that at least seven countries had made genuine offers to host such a meeting.
Russia has kept up its deadly attacks on Kyiv despite Trump’s pressure to end the three-and-a-half-year war, strikes killing nine civilians in the frontline town of Kostiantynivka yesterday.
