The end of the conflict “will be diplomatic”, considered the Ukrainian president this Saturday. “The war will be bloody, there will be fighting, but it will end through diplomacy,” he said in an interview with a Ukrainian television channel as he marked three years since he took power.

“The discussions between Ukraine and Russia will take place. I don’t know in what format: with intermediaries, without them, in a wide circle or at the presidential level,” he declared.

Negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv are currently deadlocked as fighting continues on the ground, mainly in Donbas, an area partially controlled by pro-Russian separatists since 2014 that includes the Lugansk and Donetsk regions.

In that region in the east of the country, the Kremlin forces claimed to have destroyed a large shipment of weapons supplied by Western powers to the Ukrainian troops.

“Long-range Kalibr missiles launched from the sea destroyed a large shipment of weapons and military equipment supplied by the United States and European countries near the Malin railway station in the Zhytomyr region,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.

In Donetsk, Russia yesterday declared the “total liberation” of the city of Mariupol, after the surrender of the last defenders entrenched for weeks in the Azovstal steelworks.

Since Monday, a total of 2,439 fighters have surrendered to Moscow’s troops, ending the last pocket of resistance in this Azov Sea port city devastated by months of bombing, the AFP news agency reported.