Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the only way out of the war will be through diplomacy — in addition to a Kyiv win on the battlefield — as his chief negotiator ruled out the possibility of a cease-fire that would give Russia control of any captured Ukrainian territory.
“Victory will be bloody,” Zelensky said on Ukrainian television, and “the end will certainly be in diplomacy.”
Zelensky said the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine is facing an “extremely difficult” situation as Russian forces concentrate on the east after Kyiv gave up its defense of Mariupol and Moscow claimed total control of the port city. Russia is likely to have deployed its only operational company of BMP-T “Terminator” tank support vehicles to Severodonetsk, a key focus for its operations in Donbas, Britain’s Defense Ministry said. Severodonetsk is the easternmost city still in Ukrainian hands.
A delegation of U.S. diplomats is set to travel to The Hague on Sunday for talks with allies “regarding our responses to atrocities committed in Ukraine” and in other conflicts, and on efforts to “bring the perpetrators of atrocities to justice,” the State Department said in a news release. Ukrainian authorities have put three captured Russian soldiers on trial for war crimes, and the Biden administration is supporting steps by the Ukrainian prosecutor general to investigate Russia’s actions in the war.