Ukrainian President Zelensky speaks to Putin about soldiers killed in Donbas
On the morning of August 7, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had a “long conversation” with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the death of Ukrainian soldiers near the village of Pavlopil.
“This morning I spoke to Russian President Putin about it. I told him that it doesn’t bring us closer to peace. I am imploring [him] to use his influence to stop that side from killing our people. The second issue that I raised was that we are continuing to de-mine, and that we need to reduce the time for building the bridge from that side,” Zelensky said at a press conference.
“We had a long conversation. I say that our people are being killed, and they say there that there are some parts where our people are shooting at civilians… You know, everyone says that they want peace. Everyone talks about it, but apart from words, we need to move forward quickly,” the Ukrainian President remarked.
He said that later on Wednesday he planned to talk to French President Emmanuel Macron on the phone, and possibly also to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“[I want] to arrange an urgent meeting, so that we no longer say: ‘This year there must be a meeting in the Normandy format’. But how many more people could die this year?” said Zelensky.
“We need urgently, in the very near future, to meet with the leaders of the Normandy four, to look each other in the eye, and put an end to this war,” Zelensky stressed.
Zelensky also noted that the incident in Pavlopil could affect the schedule of his visit to Turkey.
“I was already supposed to fly to Turkey. Now we will take off urgently. If something happens on our side, I will have to return. Turkey is aware of this, President Erdogan is understanding about it. But I hope that everything will be normal, everything will be peaceful,” Zelensky explained.
Ukrainian Chief of General Staff Ruslan Khomchak, who was present at the press conference, said that since the start of the ceasefire on July 21, four Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and nine wounded.
The number of shots fired during this time has decreased significantly, and most of them have been provocative in nature, but there have been cases where the militants have shot with precision. One such case took place on Tuesday in Pavlopil and led to the death of four soldiers.
“It was a shot from a grenade launcher, a 82 mm mortar shell was screwed on, which landed directly in the trench where the soldiers were engaged in engineering work on the position. The soldiers were ready to give a response, but according to our information, the enemy abandoned his position...” Khomchak explained.