President Volodymyr Zelensky made the case on Monday for a diplomatic settlement to Russia’s war in Ukraine and raised the idea of foreign troops being deployed in his country until it could join the Nato military alliance.
Ukraine planned to call a meeting of its key European allies this month to coordinate a joint position and make sure Kyiv was in a strong position on the battlefield and in any potential talks, said the presidential spokesman on Monday.
Friedrich Merz, the frontrunner in the race to become Germany’s next chancellor, used an election-time visit to Kyiv to condemn his country’s policy on arming Ukraine as akin to making the country fight with one arm tied behind its back.
Zelensky seeks diplomatic end to war, floats role for foreign troops
President Volodymyr Zelensky made the case on Monday for a diplomatic settlement to Russia’s war in Ukraine and raised the idea of foreign troops being deployed in his country until it could join the Nato military alliance.
The remarks at a joint press conference with German opposition leader Friedrich Merz were the latest to signal Kyiv’s increasing openness to war negotiations, with Donald Trump preparing to return to the White House on 20 January.
The US president-elect, who has said he wants to end the war quickly, called on Sunday for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations to end the “madness”, after he met Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron for talks in Paris.
“Ukraine wants this war to end more than anyone else. No doubt, a diplomatic resolution would save more lives. We do seek it,” Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv on Monday.
He said he discussed a “freezing” of the lines in the war when he met Macron and Trump. Russia controls nearly a fifth of Ukrainian territory after launching the 2022 invasion that unleashed the biggest conflict in Europe since World War Two.
Zelensky said he told the two leaders that he did not believe Putin wanted to end the war and that the Russian president would need to be forced.
“You can only exert force if Ukraine is strong. A strong Ukraine before any diplomacy means a strong [Ukraine] on the battlefield,” he said, implying Kyiv needed help to become stronger.
Zelensky also returned to an idea raised in February by Macron, who floated the possibility of European nations sending troops to Ukraine. There was no consensus on the matter among the European leaders.
“We can think and work on Emmanuel’s position. He suggested that some part of troops of a country be present on the territory of Ukraine, which would guarantee us security while Ukraine is not in Nato,” said Zelensky.
“But we must have a clear understanding of when Ukraine will be in the EU and when Ukraine will be in Nato,” he added.
Kyiv, which has made a concerted push to obtain an invitation to join Nato, has insisted throughout the war that it needs security guarantees to prevent Russia from launching another invasion once the current hostilities are halted.
“If there is a pause while Ukraine is not in Nato, and even if we had the invitation, and we would not be in Nato, and there will be a pause, then who guarantees us any kind of security?” Zelensky asked at the press conference.
Russia has demanded that Ukraine abandon its Nato ambitions and sees Kyiv’s membership of the alliance as an unacceptable security threat.
The Ukrainian leader told reporters he was hoping to call outgoing US President Joe Biden in the coming days to discuss Nato membership.
Kyiv plans December allies’ meeting to strengthen position in any talks
Ukraine planned to call a meeting of its key European allies this month to coordinate a joint position and make sure Kyiv was in a strong position on the battlefield and in any potential talks, said the presidential spokesman on Monday.
Ukraine has intensified calls for help from its supporters, particularly in the build-up to the inauguration of Trump, who has said he wants to end the Ukraine-Russia war quickly.
“Ukraine is gathering key European partners who, together with the United States, are able to ensure the maximum strengthening of our state,” said spokesperson Sergiy Nykyforov.
The meeting was needed to coordinate a joint position and guarantee that Ukraine was “strong in any scenario, both in negotiations and on the battlefield”, he added.
The final list of participants was still being decided, said Nykyforov.
It should include countries which possess long-range weapons, invest in Ukrainian arms production and can decide on Ukraine’s future in the Nato alliance, he added.
We’ll boost Ukraine military, German opposition leader tells Zelensky
Friedrich Merz, the frontrunner in the race to become Germany’s next chancellor, used an election-time visit to Kyiv to condemn his country’s policy on arming Ukraine as akin to making the country fight with one arm tied behind its back.
Merz, leader of the opposition conservatives, is a critic of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s refusal to follow Britain, France and the US in sending Kyiv longer-range weapons capable of striking deep inside Russian territory.
Merz’s centre-right party alliance is the clear favourite to unseat the Social Democrat, Scholz, in Germany’s 23 February vote, enjoying a lead of more than 10 percentage points in most polls.
“We want your army to be capable of hitting military bases in Russia. Not the civilian population, not infrastructure, but the military targets from which your country is being attacked,” he told Zelensky.
Scholz has resisted Zelensky’s requests for Germany’s Taurus cruise missile, whose range and power he said would bring an unacceptable risk of escalation and might be construed as tantamount to Germany joining the war.
Military experts believe the Taurus, with its bunker-busting warhead, could be instrumental in destroying targets like the Kersh bridge that links Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, with Russia’s mainland.
“With these range limits, we are forcing your country to fight with one hand tied behind your back,” said Merz.
Germany is the second-largest provider of financial and military support to Ukraine after the US and hosts more Ukrainian war refugees — more than a million — than any other country.
With a flagging economy, questions of war and peace, and Germany’s capacity for hosting refugees all high on the public agenda, populist left and far-right parties are taking aim at the hitherto broad consensus on backing Ukraine.
Scholz and Merz have both made Ukraine a campaign centrepiece in different ways. Merz’s visit follows Scholz’s own overnight train journey last week for a coveted photo opportunity with Ukraine’s leader.
Despite a track record of strong backing for Ukraine, Scholz, mindful of his more dovish voter base, now portrays himself as a peace candidate, warning voters against what he says is Merz’s willingness to escalate a conflict with a nuclear-armed power.
No contact with Trump so far, says Kremlin
The Kremlin said on Monday that it had so far had no contact with Trump or his team after the US president-elect called for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to end “the madness” of war.
Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has left tens of thousands dead, displaced millions and triggered the biggest crisis in relations between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Trump said Ukraine had lost some 400,000 soldiers while Russia had lost 600,000 dead and wounded. Russia does not disclose its losses but Zelensky said 43,000 soldiers had been killed in the war and that there had been 370,000 wounded soldiers.
Asked if there had been any contact with Trump or his team, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “No, there have still been no contacts.”
Nuclear weapons must never be used, Nagasaki survivor tells Putin
Russian President Vldaimir Putin does not truly understand the destructive power of nuclear weapons, a 92-year-old survivor of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki said on Monday, on the eve of his Japanese survivors’ group receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.
Terumi Tanaka was referring to threats made by Putin and other senior Russian officials to use nuclear weapons if necessary to counter what they see as an aggressive and hostile West as the war in Ukraine grinds towards its third anniversary.
Last month Putin, whose country has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike in response to a broader range of conventional attacks.
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize was won by Nihon Hidankyo, a group of now elderly survivors of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons”.
“I don’t think President Putin truly understands what nuclear weapons are for human beings,” Tanaka, a co-chair of the group, told a news conference when asked about the Russian leader’s rhetoric and his decision to lower the threshold.
“I don’t think he has even thought about this or understood this... What we need to do is to have him really understand what these are.
“We would like to say nuclear weapons are things which must never be used,” said Tanaka, adding that he had sent such a message to the Russian leader on behalf of Nihon Hidankyo.
On Tuesday, Tanaka will give the Nobel lecture on behalf of Nihon Hidankyo at a ceremony at Oslo City Hall. The group’s two other co-chairs, Shigemitsu Tanaka (84) and Toshiyuki Mimaki (82) will also attend.
An estimated 210,000 people died, either immediately or over time, as a result of the bombs dropped in 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on 6 and 9 August, respectively. Today’s nuclear weapons are far more powerful than those used at that time.
Ukraine’s drone-hunting judges fight on two fronts
When Ukrainian judge Vladyslav Tsukurov learned he could serve his country with both gavel and gun, he jumped at the chance.
By day, he helps keep the wartime judicial system going, ruling over civil and criminal cases outside Ukraine’s capital Kyiv.
By night, he joins a volunteer force mostly made up of fellow judges, law enforcement officials and other public servants shining searchlights into the sky, trying to spot Russian drones and shoot them down with machine guns.
Judges are exempt from the draft. But he said he signed up after his daughters chose to stay in the country as the fighting raged. “As a father, I must protect them,” he said. “My family chose Ukraine.”
Russian forces, advancing on the battlefield, are increasingly striking Ukrainian towns and cities and focusing their fire on infrastructure as winter sets in and demand for electricity rises.
Much of the job of scanning the skies for incoming attacks falls to territorial defence units, most of them made up of a random collection of volunteers and recruits.
Tsukurov’s unit, called “Mriya” (“Dream”), was founded soon after Russia’s February 2022 invasion by a former Supreme Court justice who drew on his contacts.
“We are all judges from different courts, and we find a common language. And I believe this is one of the best teams,” said Tsukurov, a native of Kharkiv.
“The only thing is fatigue. Lately, air-raid alarms have been ringing all night,” said Leonid Merzlyi, a municipal judge in a Kyiv suburb, near his heavy machine gun.
“Then you go to work, and ... you need to listen to cases.” DM