In his New Year’s Eve address, the wartime president said his country wanted an end to the war but not at “any cost”, and that any agreement needed strong security guarantees to deter Russia from invading again.
“The peace agreement is 90 percent ready. Ten percent remains. And that is far more than just numbers,” Zelensky said in the address, posted on his Telegram account.
“Those are the 10 percent that will determine the fate of peace, the fate of Ukraine and Europe,” he added.
The United States has sought to craft a peace deal with input from both Moscow and Kyiv, but has failed to reach a breakthrough on the key issue of territory in a post-war settlement.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been pushing for full control of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region as part of a deal, but Zelensky said in his address that he did not believe Russia would stop at the Donbas if Ukraine withdrew.
“‘Pull out from the Donbas, and it will all be over.’ That is how deception sounds when translated from Russian — into Ukrainian, into English, into German, into French, and, in fact, into any language in the world,” he added.
