Zelenskyy urges Trump to use Gaza ceasefire momentum to broker peace in Ukraine | Ukraine
During a phone call between the two leaders on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Donald Trump to use the momentum from the Gaza ceasefire to achieve peace in Ukraine.
Trump and Zelenskyy discussed, among other issues, Ukraine’s request that the United States allow the delivery of Tomahawk cruise missiles to bolster Kiev’s ability to launch long-range strikes inside Russia. axios.
This follows Trump’s claim that he has “sort of decided” to sell Tomahawks to NATO countries for supply to Ukraine.
“If one war can be stopped in one region, then other wars, including the Russian war, can certainly be stopped,” Zelensky wrote on Facebook, a day after Moscow launched a massive drone and missile attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure that triggered widespread power outages in Kiev and elsewhere.
Speaking to X, Zelensky said, “I informed President Trump about Russia’s attacks on our energy system and I appreciate his willingness to support us,” adding that they had a “very positive and productive” meeting on “concrete agreements” to strengthen Ukraine’s air defense.
The phone call took place amid growing concerns in Kiev about both the increasing scale of Russia’s air strikes and Ukraine’s ability to counter increasingly sophisticated air strikes involving hundreds of drones simultaneously, as well as Russia’s more effective countermeasures against Kiev’s air defenses.
Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, warned that Russia was increasing its air strikes.
“New challenges await us. Over the past month, the enemy has increased the number of air attack weapons, and although our air defense is approximately 74% effective, we need to make additional efforts to cover the rear energy sector, critical infrastructure and logistics,” Syrskyi said.
Earlier this week, Russia launched 465 Shahed-type attack aircraft and decoy drones, as well as 32 cruise and ballistic missiles, against Ukraine.
The latest talks between Trump and Zelenskyy took place amid ongoing debate in Washington over whether to supply Ukraine with Tomahawk cruise missiles, which Kiev has long sought; Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that this move would be “a completely new, qualitatively new phase of tension.”
The phone call between the two leaders took place at a time when relations between the US president and Zelenskyy were warming.
In his late-night speech on Friday, Ukraine’s president said Russia was taking advantage of the fact that the world was “almost exclusively focused on the possibility of establishing peace in the Middle East” and called for Ukraine to strengthen its air defense systems and tighten sanctions against Russia.
“Russian assets must be fully used to strengthen our defense and ensure recovery,” he said in the video sent to X.
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in a joint statement on Friday that they were ready to coordinate and take action to use the value of immobilized Russian sovereign assets “to support Ukraine’s armed forces and thus bring Russia to the negotiating table.”
In the statement, it was stated that they aimed to do this “in close cooperation with the USA”.
