Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, criticising Russia’s military campaign, said the Kremlin had set 15 deadlines over more than four years to capture the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, but had had to push each one back.
Zelensky made the remarks in a video message on Monday (29 June), responding to comments made a day earlier by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Al Arabiya reported.
In a television interview on Sunday, Putin had claimed that Ukraine had offered a proposal to halt long-range attacks and reduce the intensity of the war. He rejected it, however, calling it merely a tactic to ease pressure on Kyiv’s military.
Zelensky said Putin’s statement showed he was disconnected from the reality faced by ordinary Russians. Ukrainian drone strikes had damaged Russia’s oil industry, he said, creating fuel shortages in various parts of the country and forcing people to queue at petrol stations.
Even as an oil-producing country sometimes described as a “gas station,” he said, Russia was now suffering a fuel crisis — a direct consequence of the war, and just one example among many.
Zelensky said Ukraine was responding with precise military strikes rather than terror aimed at civilians. He added that Russia’s political leadership remained fixated on seizing the Donbas, but that if Russia did not end the war, the deadline it had set for capturing the region in full would have to be postponed once again.
After launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia first tried to capture the capital, Kyiv. When that attempt failed, it withdrew its troops and intensified operations in the eastern Donbas region.
Russia now controls the whole of the Luhansk region and large parts of the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions, with Moscow’s forces slowly advancing westward in Donetsk. Ukrainian officials say the pace of that advance has slowed considerably of late, while Ukraine has stepped up medium- and long-range drone attacks.
Earlier this month, Zelensky wrote an open letter to Putin calling for a face-to-face meeting, but he did not directly address the new ceasefire proposal that Putin mentioned.
Zelensky said Ukraine had already made several proposals to end the war, but that Russia had rejected each of them.
Addressing Russian citizens, he said those who had not yet been conscripted and were now standing in fuel queues should think hard about what lay ahead for them.
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