Volodimir Zelenskyj, on the failure of negotiations with Putin: “Is it possible to talk to someone who kills his opponents?”

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyhe once again ruled out any negotiations with the Russian president this Sunday Vladimir Putinas long as he does not accept defeat in the war, during a press conference with international media held over the weekend the war between Russia and Ukraine enters its third year.

“Is it possible to talk to a deaf person? Is it possible to talk to a person who kills his opponents?”Zelensky spoke about the possibility of seeking a negotiated solution to the war.

The Ukrainian president insisted on his Peace Formula – a document that calls for, among other things, the withdrawal of Russian troops from all Ukrainian territory – as only possible negotiation framework.

“We will offer him (Putin) a way to do it he accepts that he lost the war and that it was a big mistake“, said Zelensky, who hopes to hold an international summit this spring in Switzerland for as many countries as possible to lend their support to his document.

Once the support of these countries is obtained, Zelensky explained, the document will be presented to Putin as was done with the wheat agreement sponsored by Turkey and the United Nations. The Russian president agreed between July 2022 and July 2023 to allow the transit of grain across the Black Sea from Ukrainian ports, in exchange for the lifting of sanctions on the agricultural sector.

He also said that his country’s victory over Russia “it depends” on Western support and said he was “confident” that the United States will approve the currently stalled military aid package.

“Whether Ukraine loses, whether it will be very difficult for us and whether there will be a large number of victims depends on you, on our partners, on the Western world,” he said, before adding that he was “sure that the vote in the United Congress will be positive.”

Zelenskyj also stated this today 31,000 of its soldiers died in the war with Russia, thus offering the first official account of Ukraine’s military losses. “Thirty-one thousand Ukrainian soldiers died in this war. Not 300,000, not 150,000 as Putin and his circle of liars say. But each of these losses is a great loss for us,” he said at a press conference in Kiev on the occasion . of the second anniversary of the start of the war. The number, he explained, does not include wounded or missing soldiers.

The Ukrainian president, meanwhile, did not want to provide the number of wounded Ukrainian soldiers so as not to help Russia know the number of Ukrainians who went to the front.

As for the number of Russian soldiers killed in this war, He clarified that it was 180,000. Another half million, he added, were injured in the fighting.

The Ukrainian president also said that “tens of thousands of civilians” had died or been murdered after being tortured in Russian-occupied territories. Zelenskiy explained that the exact number will be known only at the end of the war.