Zelensky before talking to Trump: 'We will definitely win this war'

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump will have a conversation on March 19, the Ukrainian leader announced at a press conference.

He added that he expected to hear details from Trump about his talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Zelensky also stated that Ukrainian and US representatives had a "good meeting" in Jeddah. He concluded that ending the conflict with a just peace was impossible without Kyiv's involvement.

Zelensky said he would speak with Trump today, March 19, following Trump's conversation with Putin yesterday, on March 18.

"So far, Russia has not proven that it is ready to end the war. We will never recognize Russia's sovereignty over the occupied territories; for us, this is a red line," Zelensky said.

"We will definitely win this war," he added.

"I will not discuss with the Russians what our army should be," Zelensky also said.

"If Russia stops striking our targets, we will definitely stop striking targets in Russia. Putin's promises alone are not enough; there must be oversight. The main entity for this oversight should be the United States. I believe that this year the war can end with a dignified peace," the Ukrainian President also said.

Earlier, Politico reported that US special envoy Steven Witkoff, Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, and journalist Tucker Carlson participated in secret US negotiations with political opponents of President Zelensky. The goal was to increase the popularity of the idea of holding elections in Ukraine before the conflict ends, the publication said.

Before this, Zelensky commented on the US withdrawal from a group investigating Russia.

"I saw it in the media, but that doesn't give me the full picture. I asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs," he said.

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Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy (born 25 January 1978) is a Ukrainian politician and former entertainer who has served as the sixth and current president of Ukraine since 2019, most notably during the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has been ongoing since February 2022. Born to a Ukrainian Jewish family, Zelenskyy grew up as a native Russian speaker in Kryvyi Rih, a major city of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in central Ukraine. He obtained a degree in law from the Kryvyi Rih Institute of Economics, but never practised law and pursued a career in comedy and entertainment. He created the production company Kvartal 95, which produced films, cartoons, and TV shows including the TV series Servant of the People, in which Zelenskyy played a fictional Ukrainian president. The series aired from 2015 to 2019 and was immensely popular. A political party with the same name as the TV show was created in March 2018 by employees of Kvartal 95. Zelenskyy announced his candidacy in the 2019 presidential election on the evening of 31 December 2018, alongside the New Year's Eve address of then-president Petro Poroshenko on the TV channel 1+1. A political outsider, Zelenskyy positioned himself as an anti-establishment and anti-corruption figure, and had already become one of the frontrunners in opinion polls for the election months before he formally declared his candidacy. He won the election with 73.23 percent of the vote in the second round, defeating Poroshenko in the biggest landslide in the history of Ukrainian presidential elections.