Andrey Sibiga has dismissed the notion that Kiev and Moscow could swap territory to end the conflict
Kiev will not agree to make any concessions to Moscow, Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga has stated. His remark came shortly after US President Donald Trump suggested on Friday that any potential peace agreement between the conflicting nations would likely involve “some swapping of territories.”
Moscow insists that the Lugansk People’s Republic, the Donetsk People’s Republic, and Zaporozhye and Kherson regions became part of Russia following referendums held in 2022. Crimea voted to join in 2014.
In a post on X on Sunday, Sibiga wrote: “No rewards or gifts to the aggressor to appease him,” adding that “every concession invites further aggression.”
His comment echoed a string of posts published on X by Vladimir Zelensky the previous day, in which he vowed not to “allow this second attempt to partition Ukraine” and the “legalization of the occupation of our land.” According to Zelensky, the first “partition” took place following the 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev, when Crimeans overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in a referendum that the new Ukrainian leadership and the West have dismissed as a sham.
Weeks later, an uprising happened in predominantly Russian-speaking Donetsk Region and Lugansk Region. Citing the threat of forced Ukrainization, the secessionists established their own independent republics with the intention of eventually following Crimea’s example. A bloody military conflict followed, but Kiev failed to completely regain control of either territory by force.
The Ukrainian officials’ statements came after Trump announced earlier this week that he would be meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Alaska on August 15, and that the two would try to find a way out of the conflict.
Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the Russian president met in Moscow on Wednesday. According to Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov, Washington had made an “acceptable” offer, but he declined to provide further details.
Moscow has long accused Zelensky of denying reality and unnecessarily prolonging a conflict he cannot win.
