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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has announced that Kyiv and Washington want to see the war in Ukraine end “before winter” following what he described as a “positive” meeting with his US counterpart Donald Trump.
Zelenskyy and Trump met on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, where the Ukrainian leader said they had discussed potentially “de-escalatory steps that can open up the way to diplomacy.”
“I just had a positive and productive meeting with President Trump,” he wrote in a post on social media. “Both the U.S. and Ukraine want to see this senseless Russian war ended before winter”.
He added that he and Trump had also spoken about a winter air defence package for Ukraine as well as “other bilateral and multilateral issues.”
Russia has kept up an almost relentless bombardment of Ukrainian cities and regions since launching its full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022, but it has particularly sought to target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure over winter periods.
Ukraine has also targeted the Russian energy sector as part of its deep strike campaign, which aims to degrade a key driver of the Russian economy and impact the Kremlin’s war machine.
Ukrainian forces have launched frequent strikes against oil facilities including refineries, terminals, and depots as part of this strategy. Earlier on Tuesday, Zelenskyy announced that one oil refinery had been hit in Bashkortostan and another in the Samara region over the past 24 hours.
Speaking to the press together with Zelenskyy in New York, Trump addressed Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy facilities, saying they had been a “very serious hit” on Russia but also “a serious hit on the price of diesel.”
Trump said on Monday that Russia had “unfortunately lost control of its diesel oil industry due to its war with Ukraine” while calling for what he described as the “ridiculous and never ending” war to come to an end.
“A large number of their diesel refineries have been blown up and are, at least temporarily, out of commission,” he wrote in a post on his Truth Social account. “The whole world suffers as 25,000 people, mostly soldiers, are being killed each month. What a shame!”
Zelenskyy responded by insisting that Ukraine was willing to halt strikes on Russia’s energy industry if Moscow agreed to do the same.
“Ukraine’s energy sector, critical infrastructure, and our food exports must stop being targets for Russia, and this will lead to matching de-escalation steps on our part. Solutions are possible,” he wrote on X.