Ukraine's Zelenskyy on accepting Crimea as Russia's part: 'Will discuss & find compromise'

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday dropped a big hint on the possibility of recognising Crimea as part of Russia and the breakaway Donbass and Luhansk regions to be recognised as independent regions. He said that a compromise could be discussed.

"We can discuss this and find a compromise on how people will live there," Zelenskyy said. 

The Ukrainian President also said that he has lost interest in NATO after realising that the intergovernmental military alliance is not ready to accept Ukraine. "NATO afraid of confrontation with Russia."

Zelenskyy has been repeatedly urging NATO and the West to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine to protect the war-hit country from Russia's airstrike. However, NATO and WEST have refused to impose air exclusion zone, claiming that it would escalate the armed conflict.

Russia mined medical supply roads

He said that instead of an agreement on humanitarian corridors, what Kyiv got on Monday was “Russian tanks, Russian Grad rockets, Russian mines.”

He also accused Russia of mining the agreed route of taking food and medicine supplies to the people of Mariupol. 

During talks on Monday, Moscow proposed evacuation pathways leading to Russia and its ally Belarus, rather than to sites of western Ukraine that remain peaceful.

“It’s just cynicism,” Zelenskyy said. By opening a small corridor to Russia, he said, the Putin administration is looking only for a propaganda victory.

He, however, asserted that the Ukrainian army is countering the attack and inflicting extreme losses on the enemy, according to AP. “Battles are underway in the centre, in the north and in the south of the country – Mariupol and Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Sumy, Odesa and Kyiv, Mykolaiv and Zhytomyr.”

Ukraine has claimed that its forces have killed around 12,000 Russian troops while Moscow has so far confirmed 500 casualties in their camp. No Ukrainian casualties were disclosed. Nine people, including two children, and a mother whose photo went viral died in a Russian airstrike on the city of Sumy, an estimated 350 kilometres (217 miles) east of Kyiv.

On Monday, The UN human rights office said that it had confirmed the death of 406 civilians and 801 injures but warned that actual figures could be considerably higher. The World Health Organisation has confirmed that at least six health care workers have been killed.