Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the conditions for a “dignified peace” would emerge within months, whether achieved by military means or through diplomacy.
Speaking in his daily evening address on Sunday, Zelensky said Kyiv had already tabled every proposal and diplomatic option open to it and now expected movement in the period ahead. He said Russia had to be pressed hard before it would accept an end to the fighting.
Fighting was continuing for the eastern town of Kostyantynivka in the Donetsk region, he said, disputing Kremlin claims that Russian forces had taken it. Moscow announced the town’s capture earlier in the week, an assertion Kyiv rejected as a lie.
Zelensky said intelligence pointed to Russia preparing a fresh wave of large-scale strikes, coming after the United States Independence Day holiday and before the NATO summit in Turkey. He said Ukrainian long-range attacks on Russian territory, including oil and fuel depots, were delivering results.
The Ukrainian leader again pressed allies for more air defences, describing interceptor missiles for Patriot batteries as a priority. He did not refer directly to a row that has erupted in neighbouring Poland over those same weapons.
Krzysztof Bosak, a deputy speaker of the Polish parliament and leader of the right-wing Confederation, has claimed the Polish Government, headed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, secretly transferred advanced Patriot interceptors to Ukraine in March without informing the Sejm.
Polish Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz ordered the declassification of all military aid sent to Ukraine between 2022 and 2026 and an investigation into the leaking of state secrets. The defence ministry said the full list of assistance had been classified.
Relations between Warsaw and Kyiv have soured in recent weeks after Ukraine named a special forces unit in honour of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, blamed in Poland for the wartime mass killing of Poles. President Karol Nawrocki has since stripped Zelensky of Poland’s highest state honour.
Zelensky is due to attend the NATO summit in Ankara on July 7-8 as an invited guest, where he is expected to meet United States President Donald Trump. Writing after a phone call with Trump on July 4, Zelensky said there was “a real prospect to put an end to this war”.
