By Kanishka Singh and Costas Pitas
(Reuters) -Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his country is “closer to the end of the war” with Russia, according to excerpts of an interview with ABC News released on Monday.
“I think that we are closer to the peace than we think,” he was quoted as saying. “We are closer to the end of the war.”
In the interview, he urged Washington and other partners to continue supporting Ukraine. The full-scale Russia invasion of Ukraine, which began in Feb. 2022 as what Moscow called a “special operation”, has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people, uprooted millions more and devastated Ukrainian towns and cities.
The Ukrainian leader said that only from a “strong position” can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin “to stop the war.”
Zelenskiy arrived in the United States on Sunday to attend sessions at the U.N. General Assembly and urged his partners to help achieve “a shared victory for a truly just peace.”
Washington and its allies have provided a multi-billion dollar assistance program to Ukraine since the Russian invasion began while also imposing several rounds of sanctions against Moscow.
Putin says peace talks can begin only if Kyiv abandons swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine to Russia and drops its NATO membership ambitions. Zelenskiy has called repeatedly for a withdrawal of all Russian troops, and the restoration of Ukraine’s post-Soviet borders.
Kyiv began a cross-border attack on Aug. 6 into Russia’s western Kursk region. Ukraine says the action intended partly to prevent Russian forces in the area from launching their own incursion across the border into Ukraine.
Zelenskiy told ABC News Putin was afraid of the Kursk operation.
“He’s afraid very much,” he said. “Why? Because his people saw that he can’t defend – that he can’t defend all his territory.”
Ukraine and the West say Russia is waging an imperial-style war. Putin cast the Ukraine invasion as a defensive move against a hostile and aggressive West.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh and Costas Pitas; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)