Ukraine can still deliver battlefield results this year, Zelenskiy says
World
Ukraine can still deliver battlefield results this year, Zelenskiy says
NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday Ukraine would still try to deliver battlefield results by the end of the year and that he remained sure Kyiv would eventually have success in the war despite difficulties at the front.
Acknowledging the slow progress of Kyiv's counteroffensive in the occupied south in an interview by video link at the Reuters NEXT conference in New York, he also touted a Ukrainian battlefield plan for 2024 that he said he could not disclose.
His tone contrasted with the gloomier assessment last week of his commander-in-chief who said the fighting now in its 21st month might be heading towards a stalemate and a war of attrition that could play into Russia's hands.
"We have a plan. We have very concrete cities, very (concrete) directions where we go. I can't share all the details but we have some slow steps forward on the south, also we have steps on the east," he said.
"And some, I think good steps ... near Kherson region. I am sure we'll have success. It's difficult."
Ukrainian forces have been trying to establish a bridgehead on the eastern bank of the vast Dnipro river in Kherson region, swathes of which were liberated in Ukraine's last rapid counteroffensive almost exactly a year ago.
Zelenskiy emphasised the need for Ukrainians to remain united, something he said Western leaders could help with as the war grinds on with a winter of air strikes looming and questions swirling over the sustainability of Western military aid.
Careful to make clear Kyiv was deeply grateful for military assistance from the West, without which he said Ukraine could not keep up battlefield results, he added that decisions on providing that support were "sometimes made a bit slow".
Asked if Kyiv feared Donald Trump potentially returning to the White House after next year's election, he said it was up to U.S. citizens to elect a new president and that he could not say if his election would be good or bad.
But some voices in the U.S. Republican party were a cause for concern among some Ukrainians who fear a change in U.S. policy towards Ukraine, he said.
