He hinted during the interview that the “NATO umbrella” would not need to be full membership of NATO, rather it could mean member states, including Britain, the US, France and Germany, providing individual security guarantees to Ukraine.

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Throughout the conflict, Zelensky has never said he would cede any occupied Ukrainian territory to Russia – including Crimea, which Russia occupied in February 2014 and formally annexed the following month.

In September 2022, Russia unilaterally declared its annexation of areas in and around the Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia following referendums that were not internationally recognised.

Almost three years on from Russia’s invasion, Ukraine’s frontline defences are in danger of crumbling. While Russian forces are reported to have suffered over 2000 casualties in a single day for the first time in the past week, Moscow’s forces have been advancing at its quickest rate since the early days of the invasion.

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Russia has captured around 20 per cent of Ukraine’s territory and is advancing week by week.

Zelensky’s popularity at home is also fading, with very few Ukrainians envisioning him as their next president. A poll published this week by the Social Monitoring Centre in Kyiv found just 16 per cent would vote to re-elect him for a second term. The most comprehensive study of electoral preferences since the invasion began in 2022 also found that about 60 per cent would prefer Zelensky not to even stand for re-election.

Zelensky has so far resisted calls from the Biden administration to lower the minimum age at which men could be mobilised for the war from 25 to 18. Ukraine’s parliament ruled last year to lower the minimum age from 27 to 25 but the decision was so unpopular that Zelensky waited almost a year before giving his approval.

Retired US general Keith Kellogg, who is Trump’s pick for his Ukraine envoy, has indicated that Washington could cut arms supplies if Zelensky refused to enter ceasefire negotiations with Moscow.

In an address to media on Thursday, Putin said that Russia would only halt its attacks if Ukraine agreed to surrender territory and renounce its ambitions to join NATO, which Kyiv has described as equivalent to capitulation.

Asked if he had spoken to Trump, Zelensky said the pair spoke when he was in New York, adding: “It was very warm, good, constructive. It was a very good meeting, and it was an important first step – now we have to prepare some meetings.”

“I want to work with him directly because there are different voices from people around him. And that’s why we need not to [allow] anybody around to destroy our communication,” he said.

His comments came as the head of the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service urged the US not to allow Russia to succeed in Ukraine, warning that it would embolden other authoritarian states across the globe and jeopardise trans-Atlantic security.

“If Putin is allowed to succeed in reducing Ukraine to a vassal state, he will not stop there,” Richard Moore, who heads the UK foreign intelligence service MI6, said in a rare speech. “The cost of supporting Ukraine is well known, but the cost of not doing so would be indefinitely higher.”