Washington too often asks Kyiv to make concessions in peace talks but not Russia, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday as he addressed the Munich Security Conference. Earlier, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio sought to reassure European allies, telling the annual gathering that the US and Europe “belong together”.
Zelensky decries that arms are developing faster than political efforts to end the Russian invasion.
“Weapons evolve faster than political decisions meant to stop them,” Zelensky tells the Munich Security Conference.
In a jab at US-led talks, he says “the Americans often return to the topic of concessions, too often discussed in the context of Ukraine, not Russia”.
He also says that Europe is “practically not” present at the table, describing this as “a big mistake”.
The Russian army is losing 156 soldiers for every square kilometre of Ukrainian soil it captures, the Ukrainian leader says.
“Putin is not concerned about this now, but there is a level at which he will start to care,” Zelenksy adds, describing the Russian leader as a “slave to war”.
Shahed drones to become ‘meaningless’, says Zelensky
Zelensky says Ukraine in January alone, has had “to defend against 6000 attack drones, most of them Iranian Shahid drones”.
He says his country will produce enough interceptor drones to make Shaheds “meaningless”.
Pointing to the drones’ that Iranian manufacture s and supplies to Russia , Zelensky says the regime in Tehran “must be stopped”.
“The Iranian regime has already done and can still do more harm than many other regimes could do in the century. (…) When they have time, they only kill more. They must be stopped immediately,” he says.
The Ukrainian leader is now speaking in Munich, and he begins by denouncing the relentless Russian attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure that have left Ukrainian civilians to face the bitter winter cold without heating.
“Not a single power plant in Ukraine has been left undamaged by Russian attacks,” Zelensky says.
