Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian President has invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit, he said in an exclusive interview with the Associated Press.
We are ready to see him here. I want to speak with him. I had contact with him before full-scale war. But during all this year, more than one year, I didn’t have.”
Zelenskyy said.
Beijing, economically aligned and politically favorable toward Moscow across many decades, has equipped Putin diplomatic shield by staking out an official position of neutrality in the conflict.
Xi visited Putin in Russia last week, increasing the possibility that China might be willing to provide Russia with the weapons and ammunition it requires to refill its depleted stockpile. But Xi’s trip to Moscow ended without any such announcement.
A few days later, Putin announced that he would be deploying tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, which neighbors Russia and moving the Kremlin’s nuclear stockpile nearer to NATO territory. Zelenskyy recommended Putin’s move was intended to divert from the absence of guarantees he received from China.
What does it mean? It means that the visit was not good for Russia.”
Zelenskyy assumed.
Zelenskyy warned on Tuesday that unless his country wins a drawn-out war in a key eastern city, Russia could start creating global support for an agreement that could need. Ukraine to make unacceptable compromises.
If Bakhmut fell to Russian forces, their president, Vladimir Putin, would sell this victory to the West, to his society, to China, to Iran. If he will feel some blood — smell that we are weak — he will push, push, push.”
Zelenskyy said in English, which he used for virtually all of the interview.
Zelenskyy spoke to the AP aboard a train shuttling him across Ukraine, to cities close some of the extremest fighting and others where his country’s forces have successfully repelled Russia’s invasion. Since then, Ukraine has stunned the World with the power of its opposition against the larger, better-equipped Russian military. Ukrainian forces have held their capital, Kyiv, and moved Russia back from other strategically important areas. But as the battle enters its second year, Zelenskyy finds himself focused on maintaining motivation high in both his troops and the general Ukrainian population.
Zelenskyy is also well familiar that his nation’s success has been in great part due to waves of global military support, especially from the United States and Western Europe. But some in the United States have questioned whether Washington should continue to provide Ukraine with billions of dollars in military aid.
Trump’s likely Republican rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, also recommended that supporting Ukraine in a “territorial dispute” with Russia was not a significant U.S. national security focus. He later walked that statement back after encountering criticism from other corners of the GOP. Zelenskyy didn’t mention the name of Trump. But he did say that he concerns the war could be impacted by moving political forces in Washington.
The United States really understands that if they stop helping us, we will not win, he said in the interview. He sipped tea as he sat on a narrow bed in the cramped, unadorned sleeper cabin on a state railway train.
The president’s carefully calibrated railroad trip was a tremendous journey across land through a nation at war. Zelenskyy used the morale-building journey to carry his considerable clout to regions near the front lines. He toured with a small cadre of advisers and a large group of heavily armed security officials dressed in battlefield fatigues. His destinations included ceremonies marking the first anniversary of the liberation of towns in the Sumy region and visits with troops stationed at front-line positions near Zaporizhzhia. Each visit was kept under wraps until after he departed.
Zelenskyy makes a few predictions about the biggest question hanging over the war: how it will end. He voiced confidence, however, that his country will win through a series of small successes and small steps against a very big country, big enemy, big army — but an army with small hearts, he said. And Ukraine itself? While Zelenskyy acknowledged that the war has “changed us,” he said that in the end, it has made his society stronger.
It could’ve gone one way, to divide the country, or another way — to unite us. I’m so thankful. I’m thankful to everybody — every single partner, our people, thank God, everybody — that we found this way in this critical moment for the nation. Finding this way was the thing that saved our nation, and we saved our land. We are together.”
Zelenskyy said.
