Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski has accused the United States of being unwilling to help Ukraine, but is negotiating with Russia for economic projects, according to Reuters.
The statement was made following a Russian attack on Thursday on two civilian buses in Kramatorsk, in which at least 30 people died, according to Ukrainian authorities.
In the Russian strikes of the last two days, 68 people have been killed and another 215 have been injured, said President Zelenski.
Speaking to journalists in Pryluky, where 22 people were killed on Wednesday in an airstrike on a residential block, Volodymyr Zelensky urged the United States to respond to his requests to extend Ukraine’s access to the Starlink satellite service, to help it target Russian ballistic missile launchers.
“Open Starlink for Ukraine. You opened it when you responded to Iran… I said very openly – give it to us, help us defend our sky and dominate there. And then Putin will sit down at the negotiation table,” he stated.
“Where is the deadlock?”, Zelenski said after Marco Rubio’s statement
In press statements, Volodimir Zelenski seemed to allude also to the statements of the US Secretary of State, who had said that the war in Ukraine had entered a “dangerous strategic deadlock”.
“So where is the truth here, where is the honesty? Where is the impasse? (…) This is called lack of will,” stated the president of Ukraine.
“On one hand, you can’t negotiate with the Russians about future economic projects, and on the other hand, say that we are in some kind of… diplomatic impasse,” added Volodimir Zelenski.
High-ranking Russian and American officials, including the US special envoy Jared Kushner, have held discussions on attracting an American investor to the Nord Stream business, the pipelines that delivered Russian gas to Germany before Moscow invaded Ukraine, Reuters reported on Thursday.
Ukrainian negotiators will be in the USA on Friday and Saturday for discussions, added Zelenski, urging American President Donald Trump to increase the pressure of sanctions on Russia.