Ukraine-Russia war live: Zelensky says Putin is ‘afraid’ as Moscow suffers Satan II missile failure
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine was “closer to the end of the war” with Russia than many people realise.
He made the comments in an interview in which he also claimed Vladimir Putin was “afraid” of Ukraine’s Kursk operation, that has taken more than 1,000 square km of Russian territory.
Mr Zelensky is currently in Washington DC to attend the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly.
“I think that we are closer to peace than we think,” he told ABC in an interview that is due to be released in full on Tuesday.
Putin has been adamant peace talks will only begin if Kyiv abandons swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine to Russia and drops its NATO membership ambitions.
It comes as Russia appears to have suffered a “catastrophic failure” in a test of its Sarmat (Satan II) missile, a key weapon in the modernisation of its nuclear arsenal.
The Satan II missile is designed to deliver nuclear warheads to strike targets thousands of miles away in the United States or Europe, but its development has been dogged by delays and testing setbacks, according to arms experts.
The 35-metre-long RS-28 Sarmat has a range of 18,000 km (11,000 miles) and a launch weight of over 208 tonnes.
