Will Putin meet with Zelenskyy?
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The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
Vladimir Zelensky wants a face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin in an open letter. The Ukrainian president said he doesn't want to wait for the U.S. to shift its focus back from the Middle East before talking to his Russian counterpart in a bid to end the war. Shona Murray, Europe correspondent with Euronews, is with us now. Good morning, Shona. Morning, Clare. So is this an attempt to really set up a meeting between the two or is it just to draw focus back to what's been happening in Ukraine?
What does Zelenskyy's open letter to Putin reveal?
I'd say it's both. I mean, I think this is the first time Zelensky has addressed Putin in such a direct way with this letter, going through the last 26 years of aggression from Russia towards Ukraine, saying that he's comfortable with war, saying that we wage this war individually because he wants to basically take over Ukraine. He's saying, forget about your excuses around NATO. And indeed, at the same time, does have to try to claw back the global focus on the Ukraine-Russia war, because obviously even in Europe, which obviously is being affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the focus is the Strait of Hormuz and the war in Iran, because the Europeans have to deal with high energy prices, gas prices, oil prices, as well as consistent threats from Donald Trump and criticisms from Donald Trump for the Europeans not helping to reopen the Strait.
So there's a lot of tensions that has taken away any attention towards Ukraine and Zelensky's really trying to get that back.
Okay, I wondered whether it was a genuine attempt though to set up a meeting because there were a couple of pops at Putin in the letter too, weren't there?
Yeah, I mean, indeed. He said you are comfortable with war and you've completely changed relations over the past 26 between our two countries, which he said were stable after Ukraine became independent from the Soviet Union. But we already know that Putin never believed that the Soviet Union should have broken up in the first place and Ukraine was really its number one target. The question is, though, I mean... How viable is this conversation going to be? Because we know that Putin has never shown any interest for ending the war, for having peace, because he will fail, therefore, in his endeavor to take back the whole of Ukraine and Kyiv. And there's so many negotiations that are still outstanding in relation to the fate of the Donbass and other parts of territories that the Russians are occupying.
Although the other piece of that is that military experts have said for the past couple of months at least that the Ukrainians are very slowly clawing back inch by inch, kilometre by kilometre, square kilometre by square kilometre, a territory of Ukraine from the Russians. And that is a huge feat given the size of the two armies and the size of the military prowess of the Russians.
Well, there may be some confidence there as well, due to the fact that those long range strikes from Ukraine into Russia, they've just managed to, it would appear from looking at it from here, complicated Russian advancements, you know, to be part of the reason for those inch by inch movements that you've mentioned.
Yeah, that's right. I mean, the Ukrainians have advanced exponentially their abilities to strike into the heart of Russian territory, Russian energy infrastructure and other sort of military infrastructure that is directly within the lines of international humanitarian law. And also that has blown the morale within Russia as well. It's bringing the war itself to the Russian people, but they've been largely kept out of this for the past four, nearly five years because it's mainly only been on Ukrainian territory. Also, people, I mean, a lot of experts have said that the Russian economy has been severely choked by Western sanctions for the past five years, albeit of the fact that the United States has removed oil sanctions on some of the Russian oil fleets.
But at the same time, the Russian economy is not doing well.
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