Ukraine: Zelenskyy urges 'enduring peace' in Elysee talks

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has responded to a call by US President-elect Donald Trump for an "immediate ceasefire" and peace talks in Ukraine by saying that his country needed "effective guarantees" for a peace that was secured from further Russian aggression.  

Both Trump and Zelenskyy made their comments after three-way talks hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace in Paris that came as Moscow's invasion of its neighbor draws close to the three-year mark.  

Likely huge losses

 "I stated that we need a just and enduring peace — one that the Russians will not be able to destroy in a few years, as they have done repeatedly in the past," Zelenskyy said.

"Ukrainians want peace more than anyone else," he added. "Russia brought war to our land, and it is Russia that most seeks to disrupt the possibility of peace."

But the Ukrainian leader said his country needed "effective guarantees for peace," a remark likely reflecting Kyiv's longstanding calls for NATO to provide such guarantees.

"A ceasefire without guarantees can be reignited at any moment, as Putin has already done before," he said, adding: "War cannot be endless — only peace mut be permanent and reliable."  

Zelenskyy also said that 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and that 370,000 had been wounded in the course of the Russian invasion. Kyiv, like Moscow, has rarely given any indications of casualty figures among its armed forces, and observers say they are likely to be far higher than admitted on both sides.

'Ukraine would like to make a deal': Trump

Trump, who has promised to put a rapid stop to the conflict in Ukraine after he takes office in the White House in January, without giving any details on the method he plans to use, claimed on Sunday that "Zelenskyy and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness."

"There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin. Too many lives are being so needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed, and if it keeps going, it can turn into something much bigger, and far worse," he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

Trump also wrote that Russia had not intervened effectively to aid Syrian President Bashar Assad in the face of the current successful rebel offensive because it "had lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine, where close to 600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead."

Trump has been in the French capital to attend the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral, which has been restored after being badly damaged in a 2019 fire.

Kremlin says it is open to talks

The Kremlin on Sunday questioned the casualty figure given by Trump, saying it reflected Ukraine's interpretation.

 It also said it was open to talks on Ukraine, though it put several conditions on them that Kyiv has previously called unacceptable. 

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said any peace negotiations had to be based on agreements reached in Istanbul in 2022 and on current battlefield realities.

With the latter remark, he was likely referring to previous Russian demands that Moscow retain the territories in the east of Ukraine that it seized during its invasion.

tj/sms (AP, AFP, Reuters)