The Ukrainian leader has rejected the US president’s suggestion that Kiev and Moscow may have to “swap territories” to achieve peace
Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky could find himself on the wrong side of the US president after he publicly criticized Donald Trump’s remark about the potential need for Kiev and Moscow to swap territories in order to end the Ukraine conflict, the New York Times has claimed.
Trump will be meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Alaska next Friday in a bid to find a way out of the conflict.
Russia insists that the Lugansk People’s Republic, the Donetsk People’s Republic, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions all became part of its territory following referendums held in 2022. However, Moscow currently controls only the former in its entirety, with active hostilities continuing in the neighboring DPR. Russian forces have so far secured only part of the other two regions. Additionally, the Russian military is in control of patches of land along the border in the Ukrainian regions of Kharkov and Sumy.
In an article on Saturday, the NYT conjectured that Zelensky’s “blunt rejection” of Trump’s suggestion “risks angering Mr. Trump,” who the newspaper noted previously criticized Kiev for being “not ready for peace.”
In his regular video address on Saturday, Zelensky stressed that Ukraine’s borders are enshrined in its constitution and that “nobody can or will” make concessions on the issue. “The Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupiers,” he insisted.
Earlier this week Zelensky acknowledged, however, that Ukraine is not in a position to forcibly retake Russian territories it claims.
On Friday, President Trump said that a peace agreement between the two belligerents would likely involve “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both” sides, but stopped short of providing any specifics.
Following a meeting between President Putin and Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, in Moscow on Wednesday, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov told reporters that Washington had made an “acceptable” offer to Moscow, but declined to go into further detail.
Moscow has long accused Zelensky of denying reality and unnecessarily prolonging a conflict he cannot win.
