BERLIN: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview broadcast Monday that the United States was trying to “please” Moscow in talks on Ukraine and warned of Europe’s military “weakness.”
Reacting to conciliatory comments toward Russia by US officials, Zelensky said: “The US is now saying things that are very favorable to Putin... because they want to please him.”
“They want to meet quickly and have a quick win. But what they want — ‘just a ceasefire’ — is not a win,” Zelensky said, according to a translation provided by broadcaster ARD of an interview recorded Saturday in Munich.
US President Donald Trump shocked allies last week by announcing he had a direct conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on a process to quickly end the war in Ukraine.
US defense chief Pete Hegseth also appeared to rule out Ukraine joining NATO or retaking the territory lost since 2014.
On the contours of any future deal, Zelensky said “we will not sign just anything in order to be applauded” and stressed that “the fate of our state for generations to come” was at stake.
He rejected the idea of ceding Ukrainian territory that Russia has seized, saying: “We will reclaim it all.”
As European leaders held crisis talks in Paris on the way forward, ARD broadcast the interview which Zelensky recorded during the three-day Munich Security Conference that ended on Sunday.
The Ukrainian president warned that Europe was in a weak position if it could not rely on the US security umbrella.
While “readiness has increased” in recent years, “in terms of troop strength, the number of combat troops, the fleet, the air force, the drones... I honestly think that Europe is weak today,” he said.
Zelensky said Ukraine had grown more resilient over the past three years and that “Putin wouldn’t be able to occupy us the way he wanted to.”
Even so, he warned that “there will definitely not be a Ukrainian victory without US support.”
Zelensky said he and Trump had spoken about deploying foreign troops to police a future ceasefire.
“I told him the Americans should be a part of this, because otherwise we might lose our unity,” he said.
At a meeting of Kyiv’s backers in Brussels last week, Hegseth flatly rejected the possibility of a US troop deployment to Ukraine.
When asked whether he would give up the presidency if necessary for an agreement, Zelensky said that “for peace I am prepared to do anything.”
“If tomorrow Ukraine were accepted into the EU and NATO, if Russian troops were to withdraw and we got security guarantees, I wouldn’t be needed anymore,” he said.
