(Bloomberg) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said taking back Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, as well as the country’s long-occupied eastern Donbas region are conditions for bringing the nine-month war to an end.
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“A simple ceasefire won’t do the trick,” Zelenskiy said in a video interview at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore. “Unless we liberate our whole territory, we will not bring peace.”
Seizing back all of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory would entail ambitions that stretch beyond Russian military gains since its invasion launched in February. After Russia took over Crimea eight years ago, the Kremlin supported separatist forces in Donbas in a conflict that simmered despite a Franco-German-led peace initiative, effectively occupying much of the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive since the summer has pushed back Russian forces in the northeastern Kharkiv region and, most recently, in the southern Kherson region after Moscow ordered a retreat across the Dnipro River.
Despite the Ukrainian military’s recapture of more than half of the territory it had lost to Russia since February, Russia still occupies large swathes of the south and east of the country, in addition to the Black Sea peninsula.
Crimea “is not just a state within a state, it’s part of our country and part of our sovereignty,” Zelenskiy said. “Therefore, indeed the de-occupation of Crimea and Donbas will bring an end to the war.”
Still, after the retreat across the Dnipro and with both sides digging in ahead of the winter months, the path ahead will be “difficult,” Zelenskiy said.
The Ukrainian leader reinforced his message that he wouldn’t negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin after a series of referendums annexing additional Ukrainian territory two months ago that were rejected by most of the world.
As it faces setbacks on the battlefield, Russia is shifting tactics to an air war, launching barrages of missile strikes targeting Ukraine’s energy and other civilian infrastructure. Moscow fired almost 100 missiles on Tuesday, the broadest such attack since the invasion began, leaving millions of homes without power.
The missile campaign nearly triggered a major escalation with NATO when a rocket landed inside Polish territory, killing two people in the village of Przewodow. The military alliance and Polish leaders determined that the strike was most likely caused by Ukraine’s air defense, defusing the incident, though Zelenskiy’s government challenged the conclusion.
–With assistance from Kateryna Choursina and Volodymyr Verbyany.
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