Ukraine President Vladimir Zelenskiy has peace plan for Joe Biden as Russian air attacks increase

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy says the war with Russia will eventually end in dialogue, but that Kyiv has to be in a strong position and that he will present a plan to US President Joe Biden and his two potential successors.

The Ukrainian leader, addressing a news conference, said Kyiv’s three-week-old incursion into Russia’s Kursk region was part of that plan, but it also comprised other steps on the economic and diplomatic fronts.

“The main point of this plan is to force Russia to end the war. And I want that very much - (that it would be) fair for Ukraine,” he told reporters in Kyiv of the war launched by Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Meanwhile, Russian missile and drone attacks across Ukraine have killed at least five people, a day after Moscow’s biggest air attack of the war on its neighbour.

Two people were killed when a hotel was “wiped out” by one of several missiles in the central city of Kryvyi Rih, regional officials said. Three died as the country was also hit with scores of drone attacks.

Several Russian military bloggers said Moscow’s attacks were an “act of retaliation” for Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s western Kursk region - the first such action since World War Two.

But Zelenskiy said it would be for Ukraine to retaliate, once again calling for help from the West.

Zelenskiy has not elaborated further on the next steps for his plan for peace, but said he would also discuss the plan with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and probably also with Republican Donald Trump, the two nominees for the US presidential election

Zelenskiy said he hoped to go to the United States in September to attend the UN General Assembly in New York and was preparing to meet Biden.

His remarks indicated that he sees the main potential forum for talks as a follow-up international summit on peace, at which Ukraine has said it wants Russia to have representatives.

The first summit to advance Kyiv’s vision of peace, held in Switzerland in June, pointedly excluded Russia, while attracting scores of delegations, but not from China, the world’s second largest economy, despite Kyiv’s push to win over the global south.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on August 19 that talks were out of the question after Ukraine launched a major cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region on August 6.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was in Kyiv last week, spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday and told him he supported an early and peaceful resolution to the Ukraine conflict.

Zelenskiy has been adamant that Russia wants to dictate terms to Ukraine in any settlement of the war, something that Kyiv sees as unacceptable.

Putin has said any deal needs to start with Ukraine’s acceptance of “realities on the ground”, that would leave Russia with possession of substantial chunks of four Ukrainian regions as well as Crimea. Now Ukraine says it controls more than 1200 sq km of Russia’s Kursk region.

“There can be no compromises with Putin, dialogue today is in principle empty and meaningless because he does not want to end the war diplomatically,” Zelenskiy said at the news conference.

He said the offensive into the Kursk region had reduced the number of governments around the world calling for Ukraine to make compromises with Russia to end the war and give up swathes of territory.

On the battlefield, Zelenskiy mocked Putin, who he said was prioritising the capture of Ukrainian land over the defence of Russia’s territory.

He pointed to the Kursk region where Ukraine has claimed the capture of 100 settlements, while Russian forces continue to inch forward in the eastern Donetsk region.

The Ukrainian leader also said that Kyiv was continuing to make progress on its domestic weapons production and that it had conducted its first test of a domestically produced ballistic missile.