Grin and Bear It, Ukraine

"He said Putin will destroy you if you don't agree now."

"Zelenskyy had his maps and everything and he was explaining it to him but he wanted nothing to do with it."

"It was pretty much like, 'no, look guys, you can't possibly win back any territory. ... There is nothing we can do to save you."

"You should try to give diplomacy another chance'."

Anonymous White House insider 

 

"[Trump] went on and  [about] his grievances of not having gotten the Nobel Peace Prize."

"[On the conflict], the message was that Russia only wants Donbas and this is a good deal and Putin wants to end the war and it can be done quickly."

European diplomat 

 

"Let it be cut the way it is. They can negotiate something later on, down the line."

"[For now both sides should] stop at the battle line -- go home, stop fighting, stop killing people."

U.S. President Donald Trump 

U.S. President Donald Trump greets Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House on Oct. 17, 2025 | Chen Mengtong/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images

 

Once again, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been left with little options. He can, and will once again appeal to his steadfast supporters in Europe, many of whom in Russia's 'near abroad' fear with good reason that Vladimir Putin's Greater Russia aspirations to extend Russian influence and holdings among neighbouring states will turn next to them, once the Russian military's conflict in Ukraine has been settled to Mr. Putin's satisfaction.

 

Ukraine's on-again, off-again treatment and promises from the mercurial U.S. president has again dashed Ukrainian hopes for a ceasefire through White House intervention, and at the very best, an American NATO-style assurance that Russia will not prevail in its illegal, intemperate and destructive gambit, intent on annexing as much of Ukrainian territory as conceivable. The U.S. president, shown maps in preparation for his Ukrainian counterpart's rationale in defending his nation, simply tossed them aside as irrelevant.

 

In place of a reasoned and reasonable conversation and exchange of views, Mr. Trump urged Kyiv to agree to conceding its full Donbas region to Russia; a conciliatory, good-faith move that would see Moscow agree to a complete troop withdrawal, and peace would once again reign between the two nations, he assured Zelenskyy. 

 

The result saw Mr. Zelenskyy crestfallen, disappointed, concerned and defiant, planning to meet with his European allies, that is was "very important" the Europeans present "a unified position" with Kyiv. Unified they would "also address the United States in various formats." True to their pledges, European leaders again rallied around Zelenskyy, proclaiming support. The White House decision set to dominate diplomatic discussions, the Thursday EU summit included.

 

Mere days after broadly  hinting about Tomahawk missiles going to Ukraine to enable it to strike deep within Russia, this new war pivot arrived following a telephone conversation with the Russian president where Putin demanded Kyiv surrender the entire Donbas region, despite that Moscow has been unable to seize the region completely regardless of a decade of conflict. But its surrender to Russia's clutches, Putin averred would be the only condition that would see an end to the war.  

 

Although European diplomats have adjusted to  a seeming reality that Kyiv would have to surrender part of its territory to Russia to see an end to the conflict, they still have backed Zelenskyy, insisting he would not voluntarily cede territory to Moscow that Russia does not militarily control. This week's deliberation by European officials on unifying their position in response to Trump's latest reversal, and on how best to maintain the flow of weapons to Ukraine, includes a prospective "reparation loan" linked to using Russia's frozen assets for the purpose. 

 

US President Donald Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (L) in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on October 17, 2025.

Tom Brenner | Afp | Getty Images 

"[The issue] has been raised repeatedly with various nuances during contacts between Russia and the United States."

"[Russia's position is] well known [and] remains unchanged."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov 

Peace: Not In our Time

"Any parallel or alternative attempts to seek peace are, in fact, efforts to achieve a lull instead of an end to the war. [Those who support our cause must] put pressure on [Russia]."

"Do not divide the world. Be united nations. And that will bring us peace."

"When some propose alternatives, half-hearted settlement plans, so-called sets of principles, it not only ignore the interests and suffering of Ukrainians who are affected by the war the most, it not only ignores reality, but also gives Putin the political space to continue the war."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

UN Photo/Loey Felipe

Volodymyr Zelenskyy (at podium and on screens), President of Ukraine, addresses the general debate of the General Assembly’s 79th session

 

Speaking before the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, Ukraine's president appealed to global leaders to take a firm stand alongside his country, not to seek "a lull" rather than a "real, just peace", at a time when two years have passed since the Russian 'special military action' invasion of Ukraine and the third year has begun of unremitting warfare, the constant bombing of Ukraine's territory and the slow and steady advance of Putin's territorial plans, at the dreadful price of thousands of human lives, both Ukrainian and Russian.

President Zelenskyy is only too well aware of the pressure he faces from his allies in the West, as well as some of his own fellow Ukrainians, anxious to have him negotiate a ceasefire. Yet he well understands that such a ceasefire will inevitably work in Moscow's favour; no withdrawal of forces, no return of Ukrainian sovereign territory to its rightful owners, no reparations from the wholesale destruction of civilian infrastructure in towns and cities shelled indiscriminately by the Russian military. 

 

Above all, it would give Russia the opportunity to rest, regroup, re-plan, recruit and return refreshed to the battlefield.

As fr as Volodymyr Zelenskyy is concerned, no alternative exists to the peace formula he presented two years earlier that seeks the expulsion of all Russian fores from his country, Russian accountability for war crimes, release of Ukrainian prisoners of war and deportees, nuclear safety, energy and food security assurances. Russia has not yet addressed the UNGA's annual gathering of presidents, prime ministers, monarchs and allied high officials.

Only low-level Russian diplomats have been dispatched to represent Russia on the world stage to hear out Zelenskyy's speech. High-level meetings at the General Assembly are absent the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin, this year;  his foreign minister Sergey Lavrov is mean to present Russia's address. From Moscow, Dmitry Peskov attacked Zelenskyy's remarks at the Assembly when the Security Council was told Russia needs to "be forced into peace", by the Ukrainian president.

According to Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, that claim represents "a fatal mistake", as "a profound misconception which, of course, will inevitably have consequences for the Kyiv regime". This year's UN General Assembly sees the war in Ukraine moved aside from stage central while the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, and escalating developments along the Israel-Lebanese border now share the spotlight.

Ukraine officials rejected a proffered Chinese and Brazilian peace plan. President Zelenskyy addressed that as well: "You will not boost your power at Ukraine's expense", he remarked heatedly. Both Ukraine and Russia are locked in a grinding battle along their contiguous border, a 1,000 kilometre front line. With Ukraine facing down Moscow's territorial expansion ambition under the thin guise of 'saving' Ukraine from neo-fascism, and Russian-speakers in east Ukraine from Kyiv's malign intentions.

 

Russia's intimidating tactics veer off into not-too subtle threats highlighting its huge nuclear arsenal. 

Shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin alluded to a shift in his country’s nuclear doctrine, Sergey Lavrov accused the West of using Ukraine as a tool to try "to defeat" Moscow strategically, "preparing Europe for it to also throw itself into this suicidal escapade."

"I’m not going to talk here about the senselessness and the danger of the very idea of trying to fight to victory with a nuclear power, which is what Russia is."

Russia's Minister of Foreign Affairs addresses the UNGA meeting on September 28, 2024  AP

Claiming What Is Theirs

"The occupiers have already felt what modern artillery is like, and their rear will not be safe anywhere on our land that they have occupied." 

"They have felt that the operations of our intelligence officers for defending their homeland are of an order of magnitude greater than any of their special operations."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskii

 

"[In eastern Luhansk], fighting continues near the villages [on the administrative border with neighbouring Donetsk]".

"The Russian army burns down everything in its way. The artillery barrage doesn’t stop and sometimes continues for four to six hours on end."

Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai

Image taken from social media of a Ukraine-launched HIMARS hitting a Russian ammunition supply depot in Nova Khakovka. Photo by Twitter/Denys Kazanskiy

Reports reached the world press that the Ukrainian military on Tuesday had announced the destruction of a Russian ammunition depot in Russian-occupied Nova Kakhovka, located some 55 kilometres east of the port city of Kherson on the Black Sea, also occupied by Russian forces, in southern Ukraine. The resulting explosion was seen in a capture on social media. The strike was precise, inferring that U.S-supplied multiple-launch High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems was used to hit the area by Ukrainian forces.

Ukraine spoke of its intention most recently that in planning to launch a counteroffensive with the intention of reclaiming its territory in the south, even as Russia relentlessly bombards the Donbas region after treating Luhansk province to similar overwhelming tactics in its concentration on achieving full occupation of both provinces which together comprise the entirety of the Donbas region, Ukraine's industrial heartland, now claimed by ethnic Russian Ukrainian opponents of Kyiv. 

 

 

According to Russian news agency Tass, the monstrous blast in Nova Kakhovka hit a mineral fertilizer storage facility, exploding it to the ground. Also hit, the news agency reported, was a market, hospital and houses, all damaged by the strike. Ingredients in fertilizer, they fail to mention, can be used for explosive ammunition. The Tass claim of wider, civilian damage caused by the pinpoint strike has not been verified independently.

The Associated Press, however, analyzed a satellite photo taken of the effect of the blast and significant damage did appear as a massive crater precisely where a large warehouse structure stood in the city. Ukraine is in possession of eight of the HIMAR systems; a truck-mounted missile launcher with high accuracy, and is awaiting delivery of another four such systems in fulfillment of a U.S. promise.

Russian shelling in the past 24 hours saw 15 civilians killed and 48 wounded, according to Ukraine's presidential office. No fewer than five southeast region cities and towns came under Russian fire. Russian rocket attacks targeted Sloviansk and Toretsk, where a kindergarten was hit. Russia continues to make "small, incremental gains" in Donetsk where heavy fighting saw the governor of the province urge its 350,000 its still remaining residents to remove to safer areas in Ukraine last week.

 

This satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows the aftermath of a Ukrainian strike on a Russian ammunition depot in Nova Kakhovka, Ukraine, July 12, 2022. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)