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Zelensky: Ukraine will present the victory plan to the USA

2024-08-27 22:10:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Zelensky: Ukraine will present the victory plan to the USA

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said his troops' incursion into Russia's Kursk region is part of a "victory plan" he will present to US President Joe Biden next month.

Speaking at a forum on Tuesday, President Zelensky said the success of the plan would depend on President Biden and whether the US would give Ukraine "what is in this plan or not, and whether we will be free to use this plan or not".

"It may sound too ambitious to some, but it's an important plan for us," he added, saying he would also show the plan to US presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

A number of Ukrainian troops made an incursion into Russia's Kursk region in early August, and Russia has so far been unable to repel them.

Speaking at the same forum, Kiev's top military commander, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Ukraine now controls 1,294 square kilometers of Russian territory and 100 settlements, although these figures have not been verified by the BBC.

General Syrskyi said Ukraine had no intention of holding the territory and that one motive for the incursion was to distract Russian forces from their offensive in eastern Ukraine. Russia is seeking to capture the city of Pokrovsk, which is an important center and home to a major railway station.

President Zelensky also revealed that Ukraine had recently conducted the first successful test of a domestically produced ballistic missile. He praised his country's defense industry but declined to share more details about the missile.

Although Ukraine has already used several US-supplied ballistic missiles against Russia, it has been working to develop domestic production of military equipment to reduce its dependence on Western aid.

For now, however, Ukraine relies mostly on military supplies from abroad to fight Russia and repel its attacks.

At the forum, President Zelensky said Ukraine had used some newly arrived F-16 fighter jets sent by Western countries to intercept some of the missiles fired by Russia in recent days, but that the country would need more planes.

For the past two nights, Russia has hit Ukraine with a barrage of drone and missile attacks, which have left several people dead and caused power outages in various areas of the country.

Such attacks show that Moscow has no intention of stopping the war, President Zelensky said: "When they want peace talks, they don't carry out 230 airstrikes."

However, since the Kursk incursion, Russia has signaled that it will not engage in any peace talks with Ukraine.

"The topic of negotiations at the moment has lost a little of its importance," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday./ CNA