The Ukrainian president suggested on Friday, November 30, that he was willing to wait before recovering the areas occupied by the Russian army – almost a fifth of the country – in order to “end the hot phase of the war”.
A major inflection while Kyiv has until now always ruled out ceding territories in exchange for peace. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was ready on Friday November 29 to accept NATO protection guarantees limited initially to the territories controlled by Kyiv – the Russian army occupies a fifth of the country – if such an agreement could provide security to the rest of Ukraine and end the fighting.
“If we want to end the hot phase of the warwe must place under the aegis of NATO the territory of Ukraine that we control”the president declared to the British channel Sky News, according to a voice-over translation of his remarks in English. “This is what we need to do quickly, and then Ukraine can get the other part of its territory back through diplomatic channels,” he added.
For his part, Vladimir Putin demands that the Ukrainian army withdraw from more territories and refuses any accession of his adversary to NATO. Moscow controls about 18% of Ukraine's internationally recognized territory, including the Crimean peninsula which it annexed in 2014. Russia has also annexed the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhia regions, although it does not control them. not entirely.
In recent weeks, Russian forces have made territorial gains at a speed not seen since the start of 2022 against a weakened Ukrainian army.
And the conflict has recently intensified with massive strikes on territories controlled by kyiv, with Russian President Vladimir Putin threatening to hit decision-making centers in the Ukrainian capital with his new “Orechnik” missile in response to the missile dispatch supplied by the United States and the United Kingdom to Russian territory.
Uncertainties over American support
Joe Biden's administration has stepped up its support for kyiv since Donald Trump won the election, transferring more weapons and allowing Ukraine to fire long-range missiles into Russian territory.
Donald Trump, however, criticized American aid to kyiv and claimed, during his campaign, that he could end the conflict in a few hours, without saying how.
