Zelenskyy says end of Ukraine’s war with Russia is ‘very, very far away’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Toby Melville/PA)

A deal to end the war between Ukraine and Russia “is still very, very far away”, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, adding that he expects to keep receiving US support despite his bust-up Donald Trump.

“I think our relationship (with the US) will continue, because it’s more than an occasional relationship,” the Ukrainian president said, referring to Washington’s support for the past three years of war.

“I believe that Ukraine has a strong enough partnership with the United States of America” to keep aid flowing, he said at a briefing in Ukrainian before leaving London.

Mr Zelenskyy was publicly upbeat despite recent diplomatic upheaval between western countries that have been helping Ukraine with military hardware and financial aid.

The turn of events is unwelcome for Ukraine, whose army is having a hard time keeping Russian forces at bay.

The Ukrainian leader was in London to attend British prime minister Keir Starmer’s effort to rally his European counterparts around continued support for Ukraine amid political uncertainty in the US, and Mr Trump’s overtures towards Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Europe is suspicious of the US president’s motives and strategy. Friedrich Merz, Germany’s chancellor-elect after a recent election, said on Monday that he did not believe last Friday’s Oval Office clash was spontaneous.

He said he had watched the scene repeatedly. #

“My assessment is that it wasn’t a spontaneous reaction to interventions by Zelenskyy, but apparently an induced escalation in this meeting in the Oval Office,” Mr Merz said.

Friedrich Merz (Ebrahim Noroozi/PA)

He said he was “somewhat astonished by the mutual tone”, but there has been “a certain continuity to what we are seeing from Washington at the moment”.

“I would advocate for us preparing to have to do a great, great deal more for our own security in the coming years and decades,” he said.

Even so, Mr Merz said he wanted to keep the transatlantic relationship alive.

“I would also advocate doing everything to keep the Americans in Europe,” he said.