The Kremlin said it would not reach any peace with Ukraine until the aims of its invasion had been achieved, after Kyiv said an end to the war was closer than it seemed and could come next year if western allies gave it sufficient support now.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy met international leaders and members of the US Congress before talks later this week with US president Joe Biden, when he hopes to secure White House backing for a “victory plan” that he says can force Russia to negotiate a fair end to its 2 ½ year full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“Now ... we have a real opportunity to strengthen co-operation between Ukraine and the United States. Decisive action now could hasten a just end to Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” Mr Zelenskiy said on social media.
He also told ABC News: “I think that we are closer to the peace than we think. We are closer to the end of the war. We just have to be very strong, very strong.”
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Mr Zelenskiy has not revealed all the elements of his plan, but wants US permission to use western-supplied missiles to hit military targets deeper inside Russia, to degrade the supply lines and disrupt the air strikes of its invasion force. The Kremlin says such clearance would make Nato states direct participants in the war.
Andriy Yermak, Mr Zelenskiy’s chief-of-staff, said “the victory plan consists of military and diplomatic components. Ukraine’s invitation to Nato is part of the victory plan. I urged partners not to pay attention to threats of escalation from Russia.”
Russian president Vladimir Putin has said no peace is possible until Russia’s occupation of some 20 per cent of Ukrainian territory is internationally recognised, all sanctions on Russia are removed, and Ukraine agrees never to join Nato.
“You know that any war ends in peace one way or another. But for us, there is absolutely no alternative to achieving our goals,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday. “As soon as these goals have been achieved one way or another, then the special military operation will be completed,” he added, using Russia’s official term for its devastating invasion of its pro-western neighbour.
Russian forces are grinding forward in eastern Ukraine towards the small city and transport hub of Pokrovsk and have reportedly reached the town of Vuhledar, 70km to the south, where fighting is intense. Russian missile and bomb strikes on the Kharkiv, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions killed at least six civilians and injured about 50.
Ukraine said air defences shot down 66 of 81 explosive attack drones launched by Russia, and energy infrastructure in Poltava region was damaged.
“It’s clear that Russia wants to put Ukraine into the dark and the cold. The winter is coming, and following Russia attacks against energy targets, Ukraine energy production capacity has been reduced by two-thirds,” said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell. “We have to support Ukraine not only providing military capacity, but electricity production capacity. Otherwise, this country will be facing a very hard time in winter.”
Mr Zelenskiy thanked Japan for helping patch up Ukraine’s badly damaged power grid when he met its prime minister, Fumio Kishida, in New York, where he also held talks with German chancellor Olaf Scholz and Indian premier Narendra Modi.
In a report to the UN human rights council, a UN-mandated commission on Ukraine said the “wide geographic spread of locations where torture was committed and the prevalence of shared patterns demonstrate that torture has been used as a common and acceptable practice by Russian authorities, with a sense of impunity.”
