Zelensky again called for a face-to-face meeting with Putin: “Only he can decide when this war will end”

Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky again called on Saturday for a direct meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, the only person able to order the suspension of the Russian invasion of the country that began on February 24 and triggered a humanitarian catastrophe. “Today, Ukraine has no choice but to sit at the negotiating table,” Zelensky said of the difficult ministerial peace talks that began a few weeks ago. However, the Ukrainian president has insisted that the solution lies in a summit with the leader of the Kremlin.

“In Russia, no one else has the power to stop this war. Only he (Putin) decides when it will end,” the president explained in an interview published this Saturday by the German newspaper 'Bild'.

In it, Zelensky has again accused Russia of committing war crimes against civilians in recently liberated cities such as Bucha, which he recently visited. These scenarios, he confessed, have further radicalized his position. “I hate Russia, the Russian soldiers. When I see these images in front of my eyes. Children killed without legs, without arms. It's a grudge, it's terrible,” he said.

The Ukrainian president has positively valued the international response to this massacre but regretted a particular encounter with a “European leader” whose name he did not want to reveal and who asked him for “specific proof” that Russian troops had committed the massacre. “He said to me: ''Show us proof that it wasn't a staging, '” Zelensky said about what happened in Bucha. Russia has assured that its forces did not commit any war crimes there and accused Ukraine of staging the massacre.

Moreover, Zelensky regretted Germany's slow pace in facilitating a united response to Ukraine's European military support. “At first, Germany did not support us with weapons and has openly said that we will not be members of NATO,” he said, before admitting that, for some time now, “Germany's rhetoric has changed.” “Germany is conservative and cold, but it seems that the train is moving,” he said.

GERMANY WARNS THAT SUPPLY RUNS OUT

Just this Saturday, the German Minister of Defense, Christine Lambrecht, stated that she hardly sees any possibility of supplying Ukraine with arms and material directly from the reserves of the German Armed Forces.

In statements reproduced today by the 'Augsburger Allgemeine' newspaper, Lambrecht explained that, in order to maintain self-defense capabilities, future supplies to Ukraine will have to begin through the arms industry itself.

“With regard to the deliveries of the Bundeswehr (the Armed Forces) reserves, I have to be honest and say that we have reached a limit, because the troops must continue to be able to guarantee national and NATO defence,” he said.

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