Russia must pay to rebuild Ukraine as price of peace, says Zelenskyy’s sacked top general

Gen Valeriy Zaluzhny tells London conference that Nato could cease to exist if US withdraws support

Valeriy Zaluzhny, former head of Ukraine's armed forces and current ambassador to Britain, has condemned the US over its 'failure to view Russia as an aggressor'. EPA

Russia will have to pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine in any peace deal, a potential future leader of the country has demanded.

In a statement made in London, Gen Valeriy Zaluzhny, who was sacked as commander-in-chief by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy just over a year ago, also warned that the cohesion of the Nato alliance was at stake with America attempting to “delegate” security to Europe.

“We can say that in the near future, Nato will stop existing,” said the former commander and Kyiv's current ambassador to the UK.

He also accused US President Donald Trump’s administration of helping to “destroy” the postwar world order that has kept the peace for the past 80 years by the White House’s failure to view the Kremlin as the aggressor.

“It's not just the 'Axis of Evil' and Russia trying to revise the world order, but the US is finally destroying this order,” he told a conference at Chatham House think tank in London.

A Russian missile struck a hotel in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih late on Wednesday, killing four people and injuring 32. Rescuers were still searching on Thursday morning for anyone trapped in the rubble, officials said.

A group of humanitarian volunteers from Ukraine, the US and Britain had checked into the hotel shortly before the strike but survived after taking shelter quickly, Mr Zelenskyy said.

Kryvyi Rih, Mr Zelenskyy's hometown, has been a frequent target since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.

Aggressor pays

Gen Zaluzhny, who was appointed ambassador to Britain shortly after his dismissal as armed forces chief in February last year, set out his terms for a lasting peace agreement that includes Russia paying to rebuild heavily damaged parts of Ukraine.

“We should get very realistic security guarantees, and it can and should hope for the full recovery of Ukraine at the expense of the aggressor state that attacked Ukraine,” he said, speaking via a translator.

He also raised the possibility that Kyiv could re-examine its nuclear status – the country gave up its Soviet-era stockpile, then the third-largest in the world, in the 1994 Budapest memorandum.

“Ukraine doesn't have its own nuclear weapon, so it pays for its freedom with its blood,” he told the conference but then later avoided a question on the issue.

Several peace deals have been proposed, the most prominent so far being French President Emmanuel Macron’s suggested four-week truce in the air, sea and on both sides’ energy infrastructure, but not ground fighting in the east.

Mr Zelenskyy has proposed his own peace plan stating that he was willing to sign a deal giving US access to an estimated $500 billion of mineral wealth in Ukraine, potentially in return for US security guarantees.

There now appears growing disquiet in Europe over Washington’s new stance, with a YouGov poll of five European countries showing that a majority considered Mr Trump a threat to peace in the region.

In Britain, 78 per cent believed the US leader posed a threat that was only marginally short of their view of Russian President Vladimir Putin (89 per cent).

Further, if Europe was attacked then only between 18 per cent and 39 per cent those polled in the countries that also included Italy, Germany, France and Spain, thought that the US would come to Nato’s aid.

Inflaming Trump

His comments will almost certainly inflame Washington, after the public humiliation of Mr Zelenskyy in the White House last Friday that he rowed back on with an apology this week.

With the current Ukrainian leader’s position also being questioned, particularly from the Trump administration, Gen Zaluzhny, 51, could well be positioning himself to replace his rival.

Disagreements with Mr Zelenskyy led to his dismissal as armed forces chief in February last year, despite many seeing him as a national hero for leading the war effort that prevented the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022.

However, the general, who is popular in Ukraine, would certainly not be welcomed by Moscow. It would want to see its own pro-Russian president in Kyiv, a move some observers believe the US would countenance in the current climate.

Gen Zaluzhny also criticised the White House for refusing “to recognise Russia as an aggressor”, which the soldier said demonstrated the administration “does not care about the international reputation of the US”.

Nano wars

The ambassador also warned that while Ukraine was defending both Europe and Nato, the “next target of Russia” would be the continent, with the border becoming “a confrontation line any time”.

Nicknamed the Iron General, he questioned whether the West needed “another war” to understand that huge changes have occurred on the battlefield to which Nato has yet to adapt.

That future conflict could well involve the use of nano technology, that has evolved in Ukraine and revolutionised warfare, claimed the ambassador.

Smaller countries such as Ukraine or Lithuania would “be able to stand up to any other country that is much larger and more powerful” due to nano technology and advancements in artificial intelligence, he said.

“It's not about tanks or fighter jets,” Gen Zaluzhny added. “The question is whether all the players appreciate this or they need another war to come to this understanding, that the technological breakthrough has occurred.”

'Chaos through weakness'

Washington’s current pro-Russian trajectory also raised issues of US weakness and could lead to greater global chaos, said a former deputy assistant to President Trump.

If Mr Trump abandoned Ukraine “he will encourage the very same type of aggression from other US adversaries across the globe”, said Lisa Curtis of the Centre for a New American Security think tank on Thursday.

“This abandonment would lead to more conflict and instability in other parts of the world, not less,” she warned. “It would not be peace through strength, as President Trump has said he wants to do – instead it would lead to chaos through weakness.”

Britain's Armed Forces minister Luke Pollard told the conference at Chatham House that raising defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP was “just the starting gun” in a race to modernise.

“The more fundamental challenge is to fully bring our armed forces into the modern era and build a leading, tech-enabled military capable of deterring, fighting and winning through constant innovation at a wartime pace,” he said.

Since taking office with the new government in July, he had observed the UK military was ordering highly specific equipment that could only be used by the UK, said Mr Pollard.

“We’ve made it so specialist, we can’t get as much of it as we wanted to in the first place," he said. “Let’s start producing stuff that is designed to be Nato-standard, that is designed for export.”