PARIS: President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday said he hoped a summit hosted by Switzerland this month on bringing peace to Ukraine could hasten a fair end to the conflict.
“The inaugural peace summit could become a format that would bring closer a just end to this war,” Zelensky told the French parliament in an address more than two years after Russia invaded Ukraine.
“I am grateful for all you are already doing and it is a lot. But for a fair peace, more must be done,” he said.
He warned that 80 years after the D-Day landings of World War II, Europe was “unfortunately no longer a continent of peace.”
“It is in Ukraine that lies the key to the security of Europe,” he said, implying peace could not be made along the current lines of control.
“Because without control on Ukraine, Russia will have to be a normal national state and not a colonial empire that is constantly looking for new territory in Europe, as well as Asia and Africa,” he said.
Zelensky says hopes Ukraine peace summit will hasten ‘just end’ to war
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Zelensky says hopes Ukraine peace summit will hasten ‘just end’ to war
Russia says captured Ukraine’s Siversk in key eastern region
- The Russian army in Ukraine is “confidently advancing along the entire front,” Putin said
- He said last month his troops were advancing on Siversk, home to around 11,000 residents
MOSCOW: Russia said Thursday its troops had seized full control of Siversk, a Ukrainian city in the eastern Donetsk region where fighting has intensified in recent weeks, though Ukraine denied the key settlement had been lost.
The Russian army has been slowly but steadily grinding through eastern Ukraine and taking ground from outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian forces, with some of the fiercest battles taking place in Donetsk.
Russia’s military chief of staff, Valery Gerasimov, said Moscow’s forces had captured Siversk in a report to President Vladimir Putin during a televised meeting with army commanders.
The Russian army in Ukraine is “confidently advancing along the entire front,” Putin said, thanking the commanders and soldiers “for their combat work.”
Putin said last month his troops were advancing on Siversk, home to around 11,000 residents before the war, claiming that the Russian offensive was “practically impossible to hold back.”
The Ukrainian army’s eastern command denied Russian claims it had taken Siversk, saying that it “remains under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
“The enemy is trying to infiltrate Siversk in small groups, taking advantage of unfavorable weather conditions but most of these units are being destroyed on the approaches,” it added in a Facebook post.
Siversk is located about 30 kilometers (18 miles) east of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the last two major cities still under Ukrainian control in the Donbas — an industrial and mining region in Moscow’s sights.
Moscow earlier this month said it had captured Pokrovsk, a former road and rail hub also in Donetsk, but Kyiv claims fighting in the city is still ongoing.
Putin has said that Moscow is ready to fight on to seize the rest of the land it claims in eastern Ukraine if Kyiv does not give it up as part of a peace deal.
Eastern Ukraine has been ravaged since Russia launched its assault in February 2022, with tens of thousands of people killed and millions forced to flee their homes.
