Ukraine to present ‘victory plan’ to US – Zelensky

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said his troops’ incursion into Russia’s Kursk region is part of a “victory plan” that he will present to US President Joe Biden next month.

Speaking at a forum on Tuesday, President Zelensky said the success of the plan would depend on President Biden and on whether the US would give Ukraine “what is in this plan or not, [and] whether we will be free to use this plan, or not”.

“It may sound too ambitious for some, but it is an important plan for us,” he added, saying that he would also show the plan to both US presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

A number of Ukrainian troops made an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in early August, and Russia has so far seemingly been unable to repel them.

Speaking at the same forum, Ukraine’s Kyiv’s top military commander, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Ukraine now controls 1,294 sq km (500 sq miles) of Russian territory and 100 settlements – although these figures have not been verified by the BBC.

Gen Syrskyi said Ukraine had no intention of holding on to the territory and that one motivation for the incursion was to distract Russia’s forces away from their own offensive in eastern Ukraine. Russia is seeking to capture the town of Pokrovsk, which is an important hub and home to a key railway station.

President Zelensky also revealed that Ukraine had recently carried out the first successful test of a domestically-produced ballistic missile. He congratulated his country’s defence industry, but declined to share any more details of the missile.

Although Ukraine has already used some ballistic missiles against Russia that were provided by the US, it has been working to develop the domestic production of military hardware to diminish its dependency on Western aid.

However, for now, Ukraine mostly relies on military supplies from abroad to fight Russia and repel its attacks. At the forum, President Zelensky said that Ukraine had used some newly arrived F-16 fighter jets sent by Western countries in order to intercept some of the missiles fired by Russia in recent days – but that the country would need more jets.

For the past two nights, Russia has pummelled Ukraine with a barrage of drone and missile attacks which have left several people dead and caused blackouts in various areas of the country.

Such attacks show that Moscow has no intention to stop the war, President Zelensky said: “When they want [peace talks], they don’t launch 230 air strikes.”

Since the Kursk incursion, however, Russia has signalled it will not engage in any peace talks with Ukraine.

“The topic of negotiations at the moment has pretty much lost its relevance,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.