Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on March 21 that it would not be possible to negotiate an end to the war in his country without meeting Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin.
He also repeated his acknowledgment made earlier this month that Ukraine could not now secure NATO membership. Ukraine will not abandon its bid to join the European Union to reach a compromise with Russia as part of an agreement to end the war, Andrii Sybiha, Zelenskiy’s deputy chief of staff, said on March 18. “The application for EU membership has been submitted and now it is being put into practice,” he added.
Zelenskiy said on March 16 that “positions during the negotiations already sound more realistic.” But, he added, “time is still needed for the decisions to be in the interests of Ukraine.”A Ukrainian service member walks, as the Russian invasion continues, in a destroyed village on the front line in the east Kyiv region, Ukraine March 21, 2022.