This marks a departure from his previous stance, in which he said the end of the war depended on Russia returning captured Ukrainian territory.
What Zelensky said about ending the war in Ukraine. In an interview with Sky News chief correspondent Stuart Ramsey published on November 29, Zelensky said the "hot phase" of the war could end if NATO provided security guarantees for the part of Ukraine currently under Kyiv's control.
He said the return of Russian-occupied territories could be the subject of diplomatic negotiations later. The Ukrainian leader confirmed this position in an interview published by the Japanese news agency Kyodo News on Monday. “If we want to stop the hot phase of the war, we need to take the territory of Ukraine, which is under our control, under the NATO umbrella,” he said on Sky News.
“We need to do this quickly. And then the occupied territory of Ukraine will be able to return them diplomatically,” he said. He told Sky News the ceasefire should ensure Russian President Vladimir Putin does not return and seize more territory. Since 2014, Russia has captured about 20 percent of Ukraine. This includes Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. Since February 2022, when Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has captured large parts of the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporozhye regions and announced annexation of these regions in September 2022.
