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One high-ranking Russian government official says Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky does not want a peace deal because such an agreement would result in a bad outcome for Ukraine's president.
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, gave his assessment on social media site Telegram, according to TASS, a Russian news agency. Medvedev contends that if a peace agreement were to be struck between the two countries Zelensky would either be removed from office or worse yet, killed.
Fighting continues in Ukraine following Russia's initial invasion in late February. Ukrainian forces continue to push back against Russia more than two months later as one recent poll found that Russian citizens' interest and approval of the conflict have dropped amid heavy losses.
Medvedev stated on Telegram, TASS reports, that Zelensky would either meet a political death or an actual death, saying "either a quick one - from the Nazis who will hang him for a deal with Russians, or a slower one, from his competition who will attain his dismissal as the president who lost a war."
Medvedev asserts that Zelensky knows his ultimate fate and for that reason he will keep up the fight against Russia's invasion of Ukraine, claiming he will beg for resources because he has something to prove to the "liberal world."
"That is why Zelensky in the future will keep begging the West for money and weapons, trying to prove he is still in the game, that he is the hope of the liberal world, that he is the last stronghold of European democracy which a bear in a cotton-padded jacket wants to tear apart," Medvedev said, according to TASS.
The Russian official went on to say that Zelensky would feign concern for the citizens of Ukraine while "periodically positioning them as a human shield against the Bandera followers," according to TASS.
Medvedev also accused Zelensky of using "hired killers" to take out Russian journalists, a practice that he says will continue as the president of Ukraine positions "himself as a tough exterminator, spawn criminal fake news about Russia's military operation using unfortunate citizens as expendable material while posing unshaved before cameras and talk nonsense with eyes shining from stimulators," TASS reports.
Medvedev's comments come after the British intelligence report stating that most of Russia's elite military units have been significantly damaged and will be weakened for years to come due to their invasion of Ukraine.
The British Ministry of Defence posted on Twitter on Monday that more than one-quarter of the 120 Russian battalion tactical groups committed to the fight have been "rendered combat ineffective" and that the nation's most elite forces have "suffered the highest level of attrition."
Newsweek reached out to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation for comment.
