Ukraine War Briefing: War with Russia 'closer to end' than many think, Zelensky says

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he believed the war with Russia was “closer to the end” than many thought and called on allies to strengthen Ukraine’s military.In excerpts from an interview with ABC News’ Good Morning America that aired in full Tuesday, the president said, “I think we’re closer to peace than we think… We’re closer to the end of the war.” He added, “That’s why we’re asking our friends, our allies, to reinforce us. That’s very important.” Zelensky told ABC that Putin was “afraid” of Ukraine’s Kursk operation, in which it seized more than 1,000 square miles of Russian territory. Zelensky is in the United States to attend sessions of the U.N. General Assembly as well as to present a “victory plan” to U.S. President Joe Biden and presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

After a bipartisan meeting with members of the U.S. Congress, Zelenskyy also said that “decisive action now could hasten a just end to Russian aggression against Ukraine next year.” The United States has played a “critical role” in protecting freedom around the world, he said in a Telegram message, and praised the U.S. Congress and both major parties for their “unwavering commitment to this cause.”

His comments come as Republican presidential candidate Trump suggested that Zelenskyy wanted Harris to win the November election.“I think Zelensky is the best salesman in history. Every time he comes to the country, he leaves with $60 billion,” Trump said at a rally in Pennsylvania. “He wants them (Democrats) to win this election so badly.” Trump said that if he won the election, he would call Putin and Zelensky and urge them to make a deal to end the war.

Foreign ministers from the G7’s leading democracies are due to discuss on Monday whether Ukraine should send long-range missiles that could be used to strike Russian territory, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said.Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Borrell said it was clear that Russia was receiving new weapons, including missiles from Iran, despite Tehran’s repeated denials.

Zelenskiy also met in New York on Monday with the leaders of Germany, India and Japan in an attempt to shore up support for kyiv’s war efforts. “We discussed how to achieve a just peace,” Zelenskiy said on his Telegram messaging app after meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. “The main thing is to maintain unity.” He said he discussed energy aid with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and that Delhi and kyiv were “dynamically developing” their relations after a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Russian-controlled prisons are deliberately denying medical care to Ukrainian prisoners, and doctors at one prison are even taking part in what they call “torture,” according to a commission commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council.The commission, set up by the Human Rights Council to investigate violations committed in Ukraine since the Russian invasion, had already concluded that Moscow’s occupying forces were using torture “systematically”. But in his oral report to the council, the commission’s chair, Erik Mose, said torture had become a “common and acceptable practice”, with Russian authorities acting with “a sense of impunity”.

UN-backed human rights expert monitors Russia on Monday denounced the resurgence of violence in the country caused by former prisoners who have had their sentences shortened or pardoned to go and fight in Ukraine and then return home.Mariana Katzarova said that the return to Russia of former criminals with expunged criminal records contributes to the increase in domestic violence. According to her, about 170,000 convicted violent criminals were recruited to fight in Ukraine. “Many of them who return – and this is an emerging trend – have committed new violent crimes, first against women, girls, children, including sexual violence and murder,” she said in Geneva.

Katzarova also said that the human rights situation in Russia had “significantly worsened” over the past year, amid a strengthening “state-sponsored system of fear and punishment.”“No one is safe,” Katzarova said. A year ago, the independent expert said the repression had reached “unprecedented” levels. But the crackdown on dissent has intensified since then, Katzarova warned.

Ukraine Russia was accused in an international court on Monday of flouting maritime law by trying to keep the Kerch Strait between mainland Russia and annexed Crimea under its exclusive control.kyiv began proceedings at the Hague-based Permanent Court of Intergovernmental Arbitration in 2016 after Moscow began building the 19-km Crimean Bridge linking the peninsula it seized to Ukraine two years earlier. The bridge is crucial for the supply of fuel, food and other goods to Crimea, where the port of Sevastopol is the historic base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, and became a major supply route for troops after Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

Russian forces launched the latest in a series of strikes on the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia on Monday evening, killing one person, regional governor Ivan Fedorov said.A city official, quoted by the public channel Suspilne, reported five wounded, including a 13-year-old girl. The strikes carried out in the city earlier in the day and the previous night left at least 23 wounded.

Ukrainian shelling killed three people, including a child, in the Russian border village of Arkhangelskoe, the provincial governor said Monday. “The village was shelled by the Ukrainian armed forces. Two adults and a teenager were killed by the enemy attack,” Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram.

Russia will not test a nuclear weapon as long as the United States refrains from conducting tests, President Vladimir Putin’s arms control chief said Monday, following speculation the Kremlin could abandon its moratorium on post-Soviet nuclear testing. “Nothing has changed,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who is in charge of Russia’s arms control policy, told Russian news agencies about speculation that a nuclear test could be Russia’s response to deep-sea missile strikes in Russia.

Russia’s Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, known in the West as Satan II, appears to have suffered a “catastrophic failure” during a test launch, according to analysis of satellite images.Images taken by Maxar on September 21 show a crater about 60 meters wide at the launch silo at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia. They reveal significant damage that was not visible in photos taken earlier in the month.