Zelensky teases joint plan with allies to force Putin to stop war
on Google
Kyiv and its international partners have a joint plan to force Moscow to end its war, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Aug. 12 as peace talks stall and Russia continues strikes on Ukrainian cities.
"(Russian President Vladimir) Putin does not want to stop this war, but he will stop it. We have a plan," Zelensky said at the annual Ukrainian Youth Forum.
The strategy rests on joint pressure on the Russian leader, Zelensky said, without disclosing further details.
The president also underscored the necessity for the Ukrainian army to hold the defenses and continue strikes inside Russian territory, while noting that Kyiv's partners should work to boost the country's air defenses.
Zelensky said in his evening address on Aug. 11 that Ukrainian negotiators had passed their proposals to end the war to the U.S. side.
The comments come as Washington-led peace talks have been deadlocked for months, with both Kyiv and Moscow remaining far apart on territorial issues.
Russia has repeatedly rejected Ukraine's calls for a ceasefire along the current front lines and demanded to be handed the entire Donbas region in Ukraine's east — a non-starter for Kyiv.
In spite of this, the Ukrainian leadership hopes that the active phase of the war could end before the winter season, which would likely bring a fresh wave of strikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
Recent months saw Ukraine grapple with increasingly critical air defense shortages, specifically in regard to PAC-3 Patriot interceptors, a critical tool for intercepting Russian ballistic missiles regularly hammering Kyiv and other cities.
Zelensky also reiterated his warnings that Putin is planning another wave of mobilization to bolster his invasion forces, a move Kyiv believes could come shortly after the Russian legislative elections in September.
