Drafting ‘comprehensive plan’ to end war with Russia: Ukraine’s Zelensky

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday said he was drawing up a “comprehensive plan” for how Kyiv believes the war with Russia should end.

There are no public talks ongoing between Ukraine and Russia and based on public statements by Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the two sides appear as far apart as ever when it comes to the terms of a potential peace settlement.

Zelensky hosted a major international summit in Switzerland earlier this month — to which Russia was not invited — to rally support for Ukraine’s position. “It is very important for us to show a plan to end the war that will be supported by the majority of the world,” Zelensky said on Friday.

“This is the diplomatic route we are working on,” he said at a press conference in Kyiv alongside Slovenian President Natasa Pirc Musar. More than 90 countries sent leaders and senior officials to the two-day summit with Zelensky in Switzerland.

The vast majority of whom agreed to a final communique that stressed the need for Ukraine’s “territorial integrity” to be respected in any settlement. But some key countries that attended, like India, did not agree and others, like Russia’s ally China, boycotted the summit in protest at Moscow not being invited.

Ukraine has repeatedly said Russia must pull its troops out of its internationally recognised territory, including the peninsula of Crimea that Moscow annexed in 2014, before peace talks can start. Meanwhile Putin, who launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, is demanding Ukraine effectively capitulate by evacuating even more territory across its east and south.

In Brussels on Thursday, Zelensky said he would put forward a “detailed plan” in a matter of months. “We don’t have too much time,” he said, pointing to the high casualty rate amongst soldiers and civilians. Russia’s troops are slowly advancing on the battlefield, claiming to have seized another small frontline village on Friday.

They currently occupy around a fifth of Ukraine and in 2022 claimed to have annexed four more regions, none of which they fully controlled. Ukraine relies on Western financial and military aid to push back the invading Russian forces, but its troops are outgunned, outmanned and exhausted after more than two years of fighting.