February 24, 2026, i.e., tomorrow, Tuesday, marks four years since the current ongoing phase of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started. Since US President Donald Trump came to power in January last year for a second term in office, he has made a lot of effort to bring this war to an end, but a ceasefire has yet to materialise.
While he is involved in discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump has acknowledged that it is a difficult conflict, unlike others that he has managed to resolve in his first year in office.
Just days before the fourth anniversary of the Ukraine war, Zelensky spoke in a wide-ranging interview with the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen and shared his view of where the conflict stands, and what the future possibly holds, while underscoring that Ukraine will remain defiant.
Zelensky said he believes Putin has already started World War Three. The challenge is how to stop him, and by the time it happens, how much territory he would have seized, the Ukrainian President added.
Zelensky said it would be akin to “abandoning our people” and “weakening our positions” if Ukraine agrees to Putin’s demand for the handing over of 20 per cent of the eastern region of Donetsk, which Kyiv calls “fortress cities”. Russia has also demanded land in the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
When asked if Putin will be satisfied with receiving this much land and shouldn’t Ukraine agree to this to achieve a ceasefire, Zelensky said the Russian President would be satisfied “for a while”.
Putin needs a halt to the fighting, and once he recovers in a couple of years, where he would go next is something no one knows, but he would definitely want the war to continue, the Ukrainian leader asserted.
“I believe that stopping Putin today and preventing him from occupying Ukraine is a victory for the whole world. Because Putin will not stop at Ukraine,” Zelensky told the BBC.
Zelensky rejected the accusations, uttered by Trump as well as Putin, that he had started the war. “I am not a dictator, I didn’t start the war,” he asserted.
While answering a whole lot of questions, Zelensky was confident about one thing: that Ukraine would not lose.
“God bless. God bless, we will be successful. Thank you,” he said, wrapping up the interview.