“It is certain that the war will end sooner with the policies of the team that will now run the White House. This is their approach, their promise to their citizens,” said Zelensky in an interview with the Ukrainian publication Suspilna.
He added that Ukraine “must do everything so that this war ends next year, ends diplomatically.”
The situation on the battlefield is difficult, Russian troops are advancing, Zelensky said.
He said US law only allows him to meet with Trump after his inauguration in January.
Trump and Zelensky have had a stormy relationship for a long time. Trump was impeached in 2019 over allegations that he pressured Zelensky to dig up damaging information about the Biden family.
Despite years of disagreements, Trump insisted that he had a very good relationship with Zelensky.
When the pair met in New York in September, Trump said he had “learned a lot” from the meeting and said he would start a war “very soon”.
Trump has yet to reveal how he intends to end the war.
His Democratic opponents accuse him of pandering to Russian President Vladimir Putin and say his approach to war is tantamount to a capitulation of Ukraine that would endanger all of Europe.
But German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who spoke to Trump after his election victory, told German media that the future US leader was taking a “more nuanced” stance on the war than is widely believed.
Scholz told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that his conversation with Trump was “perhaps surprisingly, a very detailed and good conversation.”
The US House of Representatives approved earlier this year a $61bn (£49bn) military aid package to Ukraine. to help fight the Russian invasion.
The US was the largest supplier of arms to Ukraine, with $55.5 billion (£41.5 billion) worth of arms and equipment delivered or delivered between February 2022 and the end of June 2024, according to a German study by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. . organization.
