KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held talks with US President Joe Biden and with the leaders of Turkiye and France on Sunday, an increase in diplomatic activity around the war started by Russia that is dragging into a 10th month.
\n\u201cWe are constantly working with partners,\u201d Zelensky said in his nightly video address, adding that he expects some \u201cimportant results\u201d next week from a series of international events that will tackle the situation in Ukraine.
\nWhile Zelensky has held numerous talks with Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan since Russian forces invaded in late February, the accumulation of discussions in just one day is not a regular event.
\nZelensky said he had thanked Biden for \u201cunprecedented defense and financial\u201d help the United States has provided for Ukraine and talked with the US president about an effective anti-aircraft defense systems to protect the population.
\nEarlier, Zelensky said that he held \u201ca very meaningful\u201d conversation with Macron on \u201cdefense, energy, economy, diplomacy\u201d that lasted more than an hour and \u201cvery specific\u201d talks with Erdogan on assuring Ukraine\u2019s grain exports.
\nTurkiye, which acted as a mediator in peace talks in the early months of the war, also worked alongside the United Nations in a grain deal, which opened up Ukrainian ports for exports in July after a six-month de facto Russian blockade.
\nErdogan\u2019s office said the Turkish leader had a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday, in which he had called for a quick end to the conflict.
\nPutin said last week that Moscow\u2019s near-total loss of trust in the West would make an eventual settlement over Ukraine much harder to reach and warned of a protracted war.
\nMacron has championed diplomacy in the conflict but his mixed messages that it was up to Kyiv to decide when to negotiate with Moscow, but also that security guarantees were needed for Russia, have unnerved some Western allies, Kyiv and the Baltic countries.
\nThere are no peace talks and no end in sight to the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two, which Moscow calls a \u201cspecial military operation\u201d and Ukraine and its allies an unprovoked act of aggression.
\nMoscow shows no signs of being ready to respect Ukraine\u2019s sovereignty and pre-war borders, saying the four regions it claims to have annexed from Ukraine in September are part of Russia \u201cforever.\u201d The government in Kyiv has ruled out conceding any land to Russia in return for peace.
\nOn the ground in Ukraine, the entire eastern front line has been continuously shelled with heavy fighting taking place. Moscow is also targeting Ukraine\u2019s energy infrastructure with waves of missile and drone strikes, at times cutting off electricity for millions of civilians in winter, when mean temperatures can be several degrees below zero Celsius.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held talks with US President Joe Biden and with the leaders of Turkiye and France on Sunday, an increase in diplomatic activity around the war started by Russia that is dragging into a 10th month. \u201cWe are constantly working with partners,\u201d Zelensky said in his nightly video address, adding that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300783,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-300779","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n