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By Ellie Cook
Senior Defense Reporter
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has begun World War III, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said ahead of the fourth anniversary of Moscow's full-scale invasion of its neighbor.
The Kremlin leader has "already started it," Zelensky told the BBC in an interview published late Sunday, referring to a third global conflict.
"Russia wants to impose on the world a different way of life and change the lives people have chosen for themselves," Zelensky said.
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Tuesday will mark the start of the fifth year of all-out war in Ukraine, Europe's largest conflict since World War II ended in 1945.
The frontlines snaking through eastern and southern Ukraine have long been relatively static, with Russia controlling roughly a fifth of Ukrainian territory. The grinding, bloody warfare in eastern Ukraine has reminded many observers of the trenches of World War I.
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Ukrainian officials have repeatedly said that if Kyiv loses the war, Russia will attack other countries in Europe and the conflict will spread across the continent. Putin has branded this "complete nonsense," while European states bordering Russia have quickly built up new defenses and surged defense spending.
"I believe, and have long believed, that Putin has already begun this war and we are preventing it from becoming a broad full-scale Third World War," Zelensky said.
Peace talks, pushed by the U.S. since President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, have made only sluggish progress. After renewed trilateral talks in Switzerland last week, Ukraine and the European Union accused Russia of tripping up a peace settlement, while Moscow has not budged from its demand to control all four regions of southern and eastern Ukraine it says it has annexed.
"The question is how much territory he will be able to seize and how to stop him," Zelensky said.
Russia has not stepped down from its demands to keep control of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, collectively known as the Donbas, plus the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Crucially, Russia has said it wants a chunk of Donetsk still held by Ukraine that is key for Kyiv's defenses in the east.
Kyiv says it would be illegal to cede territory and territorial concessions would also be deeply unpopular among Ukrainians.
"I don't look at it simply as land. I see it as abandonment —weakening our positions, abandoning hundreds of thousands of our people who live there," Zelensky said.
The Ukrainian leader said sacrificing the remainder of Donetsk still in Ukraine's grasp "would probably satisfy [Putin] for a while," but the Kremlin would then take the time to regroup.
"I believe that stopping Putin today and preventing him from occupying Ukraine is a victory for the whole world. Because Putin will not stop at Ukraine," Zelensky added.
Ukraine has said it needs security guarantees, mainly from the U.S., as part of any future peace settlement. Without these, Kyiv says, the country cannot be sure Russia will not renew its assault on Ukraine once it has recovered its strength after years of fighting.
The U.S. has said it hopes another round of peace talks could take place in the coming weeks and floated the possibility of a meeting between Putin and Zelensky. Ukraine has long called for a presidential summit between the two leaders, which Russia has ruled out.
Persistent Russian strikes have continued against Ukraine despite peace talks. Kyiv's military said Moscow had launched 126 drones and a ballistic missile overnight into Monday.
Ukrainian authorities said on Monday two people had been killed in the southern Odesa region overnight and two others killed in strikes on Zaporizhzhia over the past 24 hours.
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