Poroshenko: Now is the time to force Putin to make peace

The moment has come when a peace agreement in the Russia-Ukraine war is more possible than ever thanks to the successes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) and the resilience of Ukrainians on the home front.

This latest assessment came from Petro Poroshenko – the fifth President of Ukraine and the head of the parliamentary opposition faction “European Solidarity” – during the Black Sea Security Forum, KyivPost reports.

“I declare this responsibly. Right now, in May 2026, Ukraine, Europe and the world have never been so close to peace as they are today, on this very day. And our task is to take advantage of this narrow window of opportunity; to use the capabilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian government, Europe and the United States… Russian President Vladimir Putin once liked the expression ‘peace by force’. Well, now we must force Putin to enter into peace. I am ready to provide reasoned evidence that today this is absolutely possible,” Poroshenko declared.

Earlier this week, Poroshenko said that peace should be achieved only on Ukraine's terms, not including any territorial concessions.

He noted that 12 years ago, in 2014, the situation in Ukraine was significantly worse, but even then, thanks to volunteers who went to the front and managed to stabilize it, Poroshenko and his team managed to achieve a ceasefire and disrupt Putin's summer offensive against Ukraine.

“When I became president in 2014, in accordance with the promises I made during the election campaign, I did everything possible to stop the war. And in 2019, the then presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelensky spoke about an urgent ceasefire. I gave Putin seven days to implement a ceasefire, but it did not happen.

“I haven’t said this before, but in September 2014, I didn’t have a single battalion behind the front line to stop Putin, because right after former President Viktor Yanukovych fled, we had only 5,000 soldiers who were ready to fight. Then the volunteers from Maidan went to the training ground in Novi Petrivtsi and from there they went straight to the front – on school buses and dressed in civilian clothes.

“It was a miracle then that we developed a strategy that enabled us to establish a ceasefire… The first ceasefire took place in September 2014… No one believed that we would be able to stop Putin and his offensive at that time,” Poroshenko recalled.

The GeoPost