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Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy says victory in the war with Russia will eventually come through a diplomatic solution.
“Victory will be difficult, it will be bloody on the battlefield, but its end will come through diplomacy. “I’m very convinced of that,” Zelensky said in an interview late Friday. “There are things we can not do without sitting at the negotiating table.”
The Ukrainian leader also said his country is trying to retake fighters who surrendered to Russian forces after weeks of fighting at the Azovstal steel plant in the southern port city of Mariupol.
“Everything will depend on (the responsibilities) that the UN, the Red Cross and the Russian Federation have taken on, that they (the fighters) will all be safe, based on an exchange format,” he said.
He said Ukraine’s intelligence service was preparing for “dialogue and exchange”.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin that both the Azovstal steel plant and Mariupol had been “completely liberated,” according to a statement from Russia’s Defense Ministry on Friday, VOA reports.
Ukraine has not confirmed whether Mariupol is fully under Russian control.
In other developments Friday, Russia intensified its offensive in eastern Ukraine, using artillery, rocket launchers and aircraft to strike the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, destroying homes in residential neighborhoods; and killing civilians, according to Ukrainian civilian and military officials.
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