Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered an urgent and unequivocal warning on Wednesday, December 17, 2025, declaring that intelligence and public signals emanating directly from Moscow conclusively demonstrate Russia's deliberate preparations to extend the full-scale invasion of Ukraine throughout the coming year, starkly contradicting repeated claims from certain Western circles that the Kremlin genuinely desires to terminate hostilities.

In an extensive and pointed statement published on the social media platform X, Zelensky implored international partners, with particular emphasis on the United States administration that has frequently insisted Russia seeks an end to the war, to fully recognize these threatening indicators not as isolated rhetoric but as official military directives that expose Moscow's true strategic intent.

He cautioned that Russia's current posture will inevitably sabotage any diplomatic initiatives, employing negotiations merely as a smokescreen to obscure its overarching objectives of annihilating Ukrainian statehood, legitimizing the illegal annexation of sovereign territory, and establishing dangerous precedents that could later be applied to other European nations arbitrarily designated as Russia's so-called historical domains.

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The Ukrainian leader explicitly demanded immediate and robust protective measures encompassing strengthened security guarantees, substantial financial assistance including the seizure and redirection of frozen Russian sovereign assets, and unified political determination from all allies to confront and neutralize what he characterized as a recurring pattern of Russian imperial aggression and historical revisionism.

Meanwhile, in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin convened a high-level defense ministry session on the same day, during which he categorically reaffirmed that all stated war objectives would be achieved without compromise, dismissed Western discussions of potential conflict with NATO as deliberate hysteria, claimed the liberation of over 300 settlements in the past year, and signaled continued escalation as the devastating conflict enters its fourth consecutive winter amid relentless mutual attacks on critical energy infrastructure and civilian power supplies.

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