Ukraine\u2019s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday he was willing to give up his position if it meant peace in Ukraine, adding that he could exchange his departure for his country\u2019s entry into the Nato military alliance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf [it means] peace for Ukraine, if you really need me to leave my post, I am ready,\u201d an irritated-looking Zelensky said when asked during a press conference whether he was ready to leave his post if it meant securing peace.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can exchange this for Nato (membership), if that condition is there, immediately,\u201d the president added.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump has pushed for elections to take place in Ukraine, having branded Zelensky a \u201cdictator\u201d, an apparent reference to the Ukrainian leader\u2019s official five-year term running out in 2024. Russia has cited this in the past to assert that he is an illegitimate leader.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian legislation prohibits holding elections during a state of martial law, which Ukraine declared the day Russia invaded in February 2022. Trump also falsely claimed that Zelensky has an approval rating of four per cent.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not going to be in power for decades, but we will not allow Putin to be in power over the territories of Ukraine either,\u201d Zelensky said on Sunday, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n
A poll released this week put Zelensky\u2019s approval ratings at 63pc, and he referred to this when talking about Trump\u2019s claims on Sunday, calling his false statements \u201cdangerous\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe it\u2019s not a mistake, it\u2019s misinformation that has an impact,\u201d Zelensky said.<\/p>\n
Zelensky said earlier this week Trump was in a \u201cdisinformation bubble\u201d, angering the US President and his team. On Sunday, he sought to justify the earlier comments.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The information] about 4pc of Ukrainians supporting me is one of the signals spread by the Russians, that\u2019s why I said it was a disinformation attack, I didn\u2019t say it was President Trump,\u201d Zelensky said on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s criticism of Zelensky came as relations between the two leaders deteriorated sharply in recent weeks. Zelensky opposes the idea of elections in a full-scale war, a position backed by his major domestic political opponents.<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian president also said he wanted to see Trump as a partner for Ukraine and more than simply a mediator between Kyiv and Moscow. \u201cI really want it to be more than just mediation \u2026 that\u2019s not enough,\u201d he told a press conference in Kyiv.<\/p>\n
Minerals deal
\nTrump has said Ukraine should give the US $500 billion in critical raw materials as payback for aid which Kyiv has already received from the previous Joe Biden administration.<\/p>\n
Zelensky declined to sign a detailed US proposal last week that would have seen Washington receiving 50pc of Ukraine\u2019s critical minerals, which include graphite, uranium, titanium and lithium, the latter a key component in electric car batteries.<\/p>\n
He has said he wants to do a deal, but that it should offer security guarantees for Ukraine in return.<\/p>\n
On Friday, he said US and Ukrainian teams were working on a deal and Trump said he expects a deal will be signed soon.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Zelensky said at the press conference that he rejected the idea that Ukraine owed the US $500bn. \u201cThere cannot be [any] format which makes us debtors for the old [aid given].\u201d<\/p>\n
Zelensky said earlier this week that Washington had supplied his country with $67bn in weapons and $31.5bn in direct budget support throughout the nearly three-year war with Russia. \u201cI will not sign what 10 generations of Ukrainians will be repaying,\u201d Zelensky said of the minerals deal.<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s economy minister Yuliia Svyrydenko said on Sunday that 18pc of Ukraine under Russian occupation contained about $350bn of critical raw materials, adding that Ukraine is conducting additional geological research to update decades-old information.<\/p>\n
The president\u2019s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said on Sunday that he had held constructive new talks with senior US officials on a deal to develop Ukrainian minerals. \u201cWe are moving forward with our work. This was a constructive discussion,\u201d Yermak wrote on Telegram.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ukraine\u2019s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday he was willing to give up his position if it meant peace in Ukraine, adding that he could exchange his departure for his country\u2019s entry into the Nato military alliance. \u201cIf [it means] peace for Ukraine, if you really need me to leave my post, I am ready,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5919,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5920,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5918\/revisions\/5920"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}