The US president has shared new insight on the contents of a potential peace deal between Moscow and Kiev
The peace deal to settle the Russia-Ukraine conflict would likely involve some exchange of territory between the two nations, US President Donald Trump said on Friday.
The US president made the remarks as he hosted the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia at the White House to ink a joint declaration on opening a major transport route between the two ex-Soviet nations that had been locked in a conflict for over three decades.
“It’s very complicated. But we’re going to get some [territory] back, and we’re going to get some switched. There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both, but we’ll be talking about that either later or tomorrow,” Trump stated without elaborating which territories exactly could be involved in the potential swap.
The Russian military is currently in control of patches of land along the border in the Ukrainian regions of Kharkov and Sumy. The latter was entered by the Russian military this year following the defeat and the expulsion of the Ukrainian invasion force that attacked Russia’s Kursk Region last August.
The capture of the Russian land around the border town of Sudzha had been touted by the Ukrainian leadership as a bargaining chip and leverage for the potential peace talks.
Moscow’s territorial control over the four formerly Ukrainian territories, incorporated into the country after a series of referendums in late 2022 remains partial. The Russian military has recently liberated the entirety of the Lugansk People’s Republic, while active hostilities continue in its sister republic of Donetsk. The regions of Zaporozhye and Kherson are partially held by Russia and Ukraine, yet Moscow does not control the namesake capital cities in either of them.
The Russian leadership has demanded a full withdrawal of Kiev’s troops from the aforementioned territories, reiterating its position in a draft memorandum outlining Moscow’s roadmap toward ending the conflict during recent direct talks hosted by Türkiye.
