Mr Zelensky used his interview with Bloomberg to also turn down Putin’s offer of a ceasefire, which he has previously described as a trap. However, he suggested that the US and China could act as intermediaries.

“There are many questions between the two but if we want to end this war fairly, for Ukraine and for the whole world, they have to find a stance to stop Putin,” he said.

This week Western intelligence sources said that Chinese factories were making drones to send to Russia.

China’s influence over Russia has grown since Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with Finnish President Alexander Stubb saying that Beijing could end the war with “one phone call” threatening to withdraw economic and diplomatic support.

Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have been meeting this week in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), an economic-military alliance that they lead.