Ukraine's stepped-up strikes deep inside Russia enable Kyiv to negotiate the end of the war on an equal footing, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, just after one of the barrages struck an oil terminal and naval base hundreds of kilometers away.
For months, Kyiv's troops have been conducting attacks on Russian fossil fuel industry sites, at times daily, aiming to cut Moscow's main funding source for the war and pressure the Kremlin for talks.
"Thank God that today we have security guarantees that allow us to end this war on equal footing with the Russians in any format of diplomacy," Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv, speaking alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
Zelensky said it was "only a question of time" for Ukraine to increase the scale of the strikes, which forced some of the Russian refineries to suspend operations and boosted morale among Ukrainians, who have lived under constant threat of Russian drones and missiles for more than four years.
As Ukraine has ramped up long-range attacks on Russia, Kyiv's troops on the battlefield appear to be in the best position they have been in years, analysts say.
Ukraine's Zelensky says he is ready to meet Putin face-to-face for peace talks
Russia's spring offensive is sputtering, partly due to Ukrainian counterattacks that have kept its gains minuscule, they said.
Zelensky said he was ready to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, which Kyiv has long insisted is the only way to resolve the main stumbling block in talks that have so far stalled: the issue of eastern Donbas. Russia failed to fully occupy the area during its full-scale invasion and has demanded that Ukraine pull back troops in the region that it still controls.
"I am ready for direct talks with Putin to bring this war to an end, rather than waiting for when all will resolve every conflict in the world before our turn finally comes," Zelensky said, in an apparent reference to the US-brokered talks and current US focus on its war on Iran.