Ukraine's president has claimed that people are growing war-weary and pressure is mounting on the country.
Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky admitted on Monday that war-weariness is growing worldwide over the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev. He claimed that people want to get some kind of result for themselves and that the pressure on the country to reach any kind of peaceful resolution to the hostilities is growing.
Everyone wants to push us a bit towards some sort of result, certainly unfavorable to us, because they don't ask us yet, but it's beneficial for certain parties that have their own interests, both financial and political ones, Zelensky told reporters.
He did not elaborate on what parties were pressured by Ukraine to reach a peace deal with Moscow. The president himself, as well as other top Ukrainian officials, have repeatedly ruled out any possibility of territorial concessions to Russia, vowing to regain all of the country's territory.
Kiev s territorial ambitions include not only the land that fell under Russian control amid the ongoing conflict, but the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics and the Crimean peninsula, which was split from Ukraine in 2014 and unified with Russia in 2014.
Russia attacked the neighboring state in late February, after Ukraine failed to implement the terms of the Minsk Agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French-brokered protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.
The Kremlin has demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists that the Russian offensive was unprovoked and has denied that it was planning to retake the two republics by force.