Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Russia’s war against his country “will end sooner” than it otherwise would have once Donald Trump becomes US president next year.

In a radio interview broadcast on Saturday, the Ukrainian president admitted that the battlefield situation in eastern Ukraine was difficult and that Russia was making progress. He said his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, was not interested in a peace deal.

Zelenskyy said US law prevented him from meeting Trump before his inauguration in January. The Ukrainian leader said he would speak only to Trump and not to an envoy or adviser.

“I, as President of Ukraine, will only take seriously a conversation with the President of the United States of America, with all due respect to any entourage, to any people.

“For our part, we must do everything so that this war ends next year, through diplomatic means,” Zelenskyy said.

Zelenskyy said on Friday that he had a “constructive conversation” with Trump during their phone call after his victory in the US presidential election. “I have not heard anything that contradicts our position,” he added. Trump said Friday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida: “We are going to work very hard on Russia and Ukraine. It has to stop.”

In other developments:

• Zelensky criticized a telephone conversation between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Putin, It says it has opened a “Pandora’s box” by undermining efforts to isolate the Russian leader. “Now there may be other conversations, other phone calls. Just a lot of words,” Zelenskiy said in his evening speech on Friday. “And this is exactly what Putin has wanted for a long time: it is extremely important for him to weaken his isolation and conduct normal negotiations.” According to Reuters, Zelenskyy and other European officials had warned Scholz about the move.

• Scholz said Donald Trump privately took “a more nuanced position than is often assumed” on Ukraine. Trump’s re-election in last week’s US presidential election has raised concerns that he could withdraw Washington’s significant support for Ukraine once he is back in the White House. Scholz, who spoke to Trump by phone on Sunday, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper on Friday that his telephone conversation with the newly elected president was “perhaps surprisingly a very detailed and good conversation.” When asked by the newspaper whether Trump would make a deal over the heads of the Ukrainians, Scholz said Trump gave “no indication” that he would do so. Germany, in turn, would not accept “peace by diktat,” Scholz said.

• Scholz urged Putin will withdraw Russian troops from Ukraine and begin talks with Kiev that would open the way to a “just and lasting peace”, in the first phone call between the two leaders in almost two years. The Kremlin said the conversation was held at Berlin’s request on Friday, and that Putin told Scholz that any agreement to end the war in Ukraine must take into account Russian security interests and reflect the “new territorial reality”. A German government spokesman said Scholz “underlined Germany’s continued determination to support Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression for as long as necessary.”

• Russian air defense units intercepted a series of Ukrainian drones in several Russian regions, officials said, many in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces launched a major raid in August. The Russian Defense Ministry said air defenses downed 15 drones in the Kursk region on the Ukrainian border. It said units shot down one drone each in the Bryansk region, also on the border, and in the Lipetsk region, further north. The ministry said one drone was downed in the central Oryol region. And the governor of the Belgorod region, a frequent target on the Ukrainian border, said a series of attacks had shattered windows in an apartment building and caused other damage but had caused no casualties.

• Russia suspends gas supplies to Austria via Ukraine on Saturday. The Russian gas export route to Europe via Ukraine will be closed at the end of this year. Ukraine has said it will not renew its transit deal with Russian state-owned Gazprom, seeking to deprive Russia of profits that Kiev says help finance the war against it. Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said Gazprom’s message to end supplies had been long expected and Austria had made preparations, but Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Russia’s move showed it was “renewing energy as weapon used.”

• Russia’s largest tanker group, Sovcomflot, said on Friday that Western sanctions on Russian oil tankers were limiting its financial performance as it reported falling revenues and core profits. The US imposed sanctions on Sovcomflot in February as part of Washington’s efforts to reduce Russian oil sales revenues that the country can use to finance its war in Ukraine. Sovcomflot reported a 22.2% year-on-year decline in nine-month revenue to $1.22 billion and said earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization fell 31.5% to $861 million.