Ukraine not ready to use its territories or people as an option for peace

Ukraine is not ready to use its territories and people as an option for proposing a path to peace, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

Zelenskyy said this at a news briefing, attended by Ukrinform, in response to a question from an Indian journalist about his roadmap to a peace settlement.

"The way to peace... We are not ready to use our territories as an option for proposals. We do not exchange people for offers and territories for offers, for our values ​​and our freedom, our democracy - we are not ready to sacrifice this. And these things are fully understandable. The remainder — we can talk, we can make a decision, look for some options," he said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants peace more than Vladimir Putin does, Zelensky said, and added:  "The problem is that Putin doesn't want it."

President Zelensky said in a separate event that Ukraine currently has a broad line of technological achievements - in agriculture, medicine, and security sectors among others.

Read more: Russia will be pushed out of Ukraine militarily if diplomacy fails: Zelensky

"And we are ready to talk it over. We are completely open in all these aspects, we are ready for co-production for both markets. Of course, after the war, we can do ten times more, because at this point in time our priorities are in our defense. But we are ready to get this work started, because this situation will eventually end anyway," he said.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, Modi said during his visit to Warsaw that India believes that wars never end on the battlefield, and he supports diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine at the earliest time possible.

Read more: Zelensky: no sick old man from Red Square will impose any of his red lines on Ukraine and the Ukrainians

Modi further said that India is ready to cooperate with other friendly nations to provide as much support as possible to efforts to restore peace in Ukraine.

Photo: screenshot from the video