We'd like to see more craving for peace from Moscow, Russia should take the key steps - Zelenskyi
President Volodymyr Zelenskyi would like to see a greater desire for peace from Moscow and believes that Russia must take key steps to do so.
He stated this in an interview with the Slovak newspaper Hospodárske noviny, the presidential press service reports.
"Ukraine is most interested in peace because the war is on our territory. It must be a two-way movement on the highway to peace so Russia, which controls the occupied Ukrainian territories, must take key steps. We'd like to see more desire from Moscow to speed up peace," Zelenskyi said.
He also noted that Ukraine has "complicated relations" with Russia.
"The war in Donbas lasts for seven years. Russia has annexed Crimea, our peninsula. Historically, we had a lot of economic and human contacts before, which we had to cut off," the president said.
He stressed that the war in eastern Ukraine claimed over 14,000 lives, crippled tens of thousands of lives, destroyed families, and took the homes of millions of people. "To normalize is to impose cliches on complex processes. Here, it is a process of negotiations to achieve peace," Zelenskyi said.
He said that he communicates with Russian President Vladimir Putin in different ways. It included the Normandy four-party format and the bilateral format: "When there is such a need, we talk directly."
"Communication with the President of Russia is limited but substantial. As a perfectionist, I would like our dialogue to be more effective," Zelenskyi added.
He stressed that although the war progresses on 3% of Ukrainian territory, Ukraine still needs the support of the West, because the war in Donbas destabilizes the situation on the entire continent.
"All wars end someday. The question is how long they last, how many lives they take, how much suffering they bring. We are 100% sure that Donetsk and Luhansk are our cities. Our people live in these Ukrainian cities, including Crimea. If it weren't for external interference, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea would live in our single state system," the president says confidently.
