Ukraine’s President Wants War To End to Next Year (Worthy News Radio)
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
KYIV/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has expressed hope that the war with Russia will end next year.
He made the comments in Berlin, Germany’s capital, where he arrived after talks in the Vatican with Pope Francis.
Zelenskyy said he had asked the pontiff to help in the exchange of prisoners of war and invited the Vatican to attend a conference on the issue next month in Canada.
Yet the end of the armed conflict still seems far away, with new clashes reported on Saturday.
Witnesses are in shock as flames have engulfed a Moscow-controlled terminal in Russian-occupied Crimea for more than four days after Ukraine unleashed at least two missiles.
A fresh explosion has triggered a tower of flames almost 200 feet (60 meters) high.
The Marine Oil Terminal in Feodosia, an essential fuel supplier for Russian forces, was reportedly targeted initially by Ukraine to coincide with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 72nd birthday on Tuesday. It has been burning ever since, but the explosions are getting worse.
HITTING DEPOT
Elsewhere on Saturday, officials said Ukrainian forces hit a fuel depot in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine on Saturday, causing a fire.
Yet Russia is striking back, saying its forces have captured the two frontline villages of in eastern Ukraine, the latest in a string of territorial gains for Moscow.
Covering the war is getting more dangerous for media personnel, however, with Ukraine announcing an investigation into the death of 27-year-old Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchina.
She was captured and detained by Russia while reporting on Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine in 2023.
Officials say she died September 19, just as the young woman was transferred for a prisoner exchange.
Despite these setbacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed hope that the war with Russia “would end” next year.
He spoke in Berlin during a visit to ask for sustained military support.
MILITARY AID
German chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged that Germany and its European Union partners would send more defense equipment to Ukraine this year and German aid worth 4 billion euros, or some 4.4 billion dollars.
In Russia, those believed to cooperate with Ukraine and its Western allies face harsh sentences: A woman who worked for a Russian tank factory was convicted of treason and sentenced to 12-and-a-half years in a penal colony for selling military information to Ukraine, Worthy News learned.
Video published by the Sverdlovsk regional court in the Urals region showed a judge passing sentence on Viktoria Mukhametova on Friday, who displayed no emotion.
Her husband, Danil Mukhametov, is being tried separately on similar charges. Russian media said the couple both worked at Uralvagonzavod, a major tank producer.
Russia also sentenced two men in a region near Moscow to 16 years each “for setting railways on fire allegedly on the orders of Ukrainian security services.”
Russian media said the two “young people” – giving only their surnames, Zavalnov and Golodyuk – in the Kaluga region south of Moscow were found guilty of “terrorism”. They were sentenced in a military court for setting fire to operating equipment on the side of railway track.
It were the latest in a series of prosecutions on a war that Russia’s government has termed “a special military operation.”
Since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022, hundreds of thousands have been killed and injured.
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