section_path: Political views/Foreign policy/Russo-Ukrainian War
section_name: Russo-Ukrainian War
paragraph_text: Russo-Ukrainian War
  
  Zelenskyy supported the Euromaidan movement in late 2013 and early 2014. During the war in Donbas, he actively supported the Ukrainian army. Zelenskyy helped fund a volunteer battalion fighting in Donbas. In a 2014 interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda v Ukraine, Zelenskyy said that he would have liked to pay a visit to Crimea, but would avoid it because "armed people are there." In August 2014, Zelenskyy performed for Ukrainian troops in Mariupol and later his studio donated ₴1 million to the Ukrainian army. Regarding the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, Zelenskyy said that, speaking realistically, it would be possible to return Crimea to Ukrainian control only after a regime change in Russia.
  
  In an interview in December 2018 with Ukrainska Pravda, Zelenskyy stated that as president he would try to end the ongoing war in Donbas by negotiating with Russia. As he considered the leaders of the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic (DPR and LPR) to be Russia's "puppets," it would "make no sense to speak with them." He did not rule out holding a referendum on the issue. In an interview published three days before the 2019 presidential election (on 21 April), Zelenskyy stated that he was against granting the Donbas region "special status." In the interview he also said that if he were elected president he would not sign a law on amnesty for the militants of the DPR and LPR.
  
  In response to suggestions to the contrary, he stated in April 2019 that he regarded Putin "as an enemy." On 2 May 2019, Zelenskyy wrote on Facebook that "the border is the only thing Russia and Ukraine have in common."
  
  Zelenskyy opposes the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, calling it "a dangerous weapon, not only for Ukraine but for the whole of Europe."
  
  On 25 May 2022, two months after the full-scale Russian invasion, Zelenskyy said "Ukraine will fight until it regains all its territories."
  
  Zelenskyy has described the extensive environmental damage from the war as "an environmental bomb of mass destruction" and "an ecocide " (a crime in Ukraine) and has met with prominent European politicians and others to discuss the environmental damage.