Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said yesterday that the war with Russia will eventually end with dialogue, but that Kiev must be in a strong position and that he will present the plan to US President Joe Biden and his potential successors.
The Ukrainian leader, who spoke at a press conference, said that Kiev's incursion into Russia's Kursk region is part of that plan, but that it also consists of other steps on the economic and diplomatic front. "The main item of this plan is to force Russia to end the war. I want that too, and it would be fair for Ukraine," Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv.
He did not elaborate on further steps, but said that he would discuss the plan with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and possibly Republican Donald Trump, who are running for the White House.
Zelenski said that he hopes to travel to the USA in September to attend the UN General Assembly in New York and that he is preparing for a meeting with Biden.
His comments indicate that he sees the potential forum for negotiations as a follow-up to the international peace summit, which was held in Switzerland in June. At that time, Russia was deliberately excluded, and although numerous delegations participated, the absence of China, the second largest economy in the world, was also noticeable, despite Kiev's efforts to win over the global south.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on August 19 that negotiations to end the war were out of the question after Ukraine launched a major cross-border incursion into Russia's Kursk region on August 6.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was in Kiev last week, spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday and told him that he supports an early and peaceful solution to the Ukrainian conflict.
Zelensky claims that Russia wants to dictate terms to Ukraine in any agreement to end the war, which is unacceptable for Kiev. Putin said any deal must begin with Ukraine accepting "reality on the ground," which would leave Russia with significant parts of four Ukrainian oblasts, as well as Crimea. Now Ukraine claims to control more than 1.200 square kilometers of Russia's Kursk region, and the head of Ukraine, General Oleksandr Sirsky, said that yesterday Ukraine captured 594 Russian soldiers during the operation in Kursk.
"There can be no compromise with Putin, today's dialogue is essentially empty and meaningless because he does not want to end the war through diplomatic means," Zelenski said at the press conference.
He added that the offensive in the Kursk region has reduced the number of governments around the world calling on Ukraine to compromise with Russia to end the war and give up large swathes of territory.
Commenting on the situation at the front, Zelensky said that Putin prioritizes the occupation of Ukrainian land over the defense of his own territory. He pointed to Kursk, where Ukraine claims to have captured 100 settlements, while Russian forces continue to slowly advance in the eastern Donetsk region.
The Ukrainian leader also said that Kiev continues to make progress in domestic weapons production and has successfully conducted the first test of a domestically produced ballistic missile.
Meanwhile, Russia has carried out missile and drone attacks on a number of Ukrainian regions, killing at least six people, officials said yesterday, a day after Moscow's biggest airstrike on its neighbor since the start of the war.
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that its forces carried out a precise attack on Ukraine during the night, the Interfax news agency reported. Several Russian military bloggers said Moscow's attacks were an "act of retaliation" for Ukraine's surprise incursion into Russia's western Kursk region - the first such move since World War II.
The nuclear power plant in Kursk does not have a protective dome
A nuclear power plant in western Russia, where fighting is taking place between Russian and Ukrainian forces, is particularly vulnerable to a serious accident because it does not have a protective dome to protect it from missiles, drones or artillery, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said yesterday.
Rafael Grosi, director general of the IAEA, was speaking after visiting a power plant in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces breached the border in a lightning offensive on August 6 and Russia is still fighting to expel them.
Grossi told reporters that the RBMK-type plant - the same model as the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine that experienced the world's worst civilian nuclear disaster in 1986 - lacks the protective dome and structure typical of modern nuclear power plants.
"This means that the reactor core, which contains nuclear material, is protected only by an ordinary roof. This makes it extremely exposed and fragile, for example, to an artillery strike or a drone or missile attack,” he said. "That is why we consider that a nuclear power plant of this type, which is located so close to the point of contact or the military front, is an extremely serious fact that we take very seriously".
Grossi said it would be an exaggeration to compare Kursk to Chernobyl, where the accident caused a deadly explosion that sent a radioactive plume over parts of Eastern Europe.
"But this is the same type of reactor and has no specific protection. And that is very, very important. If there is a nuclear strike, the material is there and the consequences could be extremely serious”.
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