We’ll need peace talks to end war, admits Kyiv commander
UKRAINE cannot beat Russia on the battlefield and will eventually have to enter into peace talks with Vladimir Putin, a senior Kyiv military commander has said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly ruled out a deal with the Kremlin over the course of the two-year war.
But Major-General Vadym Skibitsky, deputy chief of Ukraine’s military intelligence, told the Economist magazine talks would be needed to end the conflict.
He warned that Ukraine was ‘on the brink’ as Russia gained ground along the eastern front lines.
‘Our problem is very simple: we have no weapons,’ he said.
Skibitsky’s comments mark a shift in thinking in Kyiv. Two months ago, the Ukrainian president urged his country to keep fighting and vowed that Russia ‘cannot break our dreams’.
Both nations are trapped in a war of attrition. Last night, Sir Tony Brenton, former UK ambassador to Russia, said the stalemate could drag on for another year before a peace deal is agreed. He said: ‘If
Ukraine offers a respectable peace that allows Putin to claim some sort of success then Russia would probably go for that peace.’
The development came as Russia yesterday stepped up attacks on
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in an attempt to hammer the region’s energy infrastructure and terrorise its 1.3million residents.
Four people were wounded and a two-storey civilian building was
set ablaze after Russian forces targeted the city in north-eastern Ukraine with exploding drones, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
The four victims, including a 13year-old, were hurt by falling debris, he said on the Telegram messaging app.
Russian state agency RIA claimed Moscow’s forces struck a drone warehouse used by Ukrainian troops in Kharkiv.
Ukraine’s military said Russia launched 13 Shahed drones at the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk
‘The problem is simple – we have no weapons’
regions of eastern Ukraine overnight, all of which were shot down by Ukrainian air defences.
Russia’s defence ministry also claimed early yesterday its forces overnight shot down four longrange ATACMS missiles over the Crimean Peninsula. Ukraine has recently begun using the missiles, provided secretly by the US, to hit Russian-held areas including a military airfield in Crimea.
Long sought by Ukrainian leaders, the new missiles give Ukraine a striking distance of up to 300 kilometres (190 miles).