Zelenskiy Stands Firm: No Land Concessions as Trump-Putin Talks Loom
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has rejected U.S. suggestions of territorial swaps with Russia to end the ongoing war, emphasizing that Ukraine’s borders are non-negotiable as per its constitution. With U.S. President Donald Trump set to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on August 15, 2025, to discuss a potential deal, Zelenskiy insists that any peace agreement excluding Ukraine would be ineffective and warns against decisions that undermine Kyiv’s sovereignty.
.webp)
Ukraine will not cede its land, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday, rejecting U.S. suggestions that a deal with Russia could involve swapping territories as Washington and Moscow prepared for talks between their leaders on ending the war.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he would meet his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin in Alaska on August 15, saying the parties, including Zelenskiy, were close to a deal that could resolve the three-and-a-half-year conflict.
Details of the potential deal have yet to be announced, but Trump said it would involve "some swapping of territories to the betterment of both". It could require Ukraine to surrender significant parts of its territory - an outcome Kyiv and its European allies say would only encourage Russian aggression.
"Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupier," Zelenskiy said in a video address, adding that Ukraine's borders were fixed in the country's constitution.
"No one will deviate from this – and no one will be able to," he said.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance will meet Ukrainian and European allies in Britain on Saturday to discuss Trump's push for peace, Downing Street said, adding that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer had spoken about it with Zelenskiy.
Zelenskiy has made a flurry of calls with Ukraine's allies since Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, visited Moscow on Wednesday, which Trump described as having achieved "great progress."
"Clear steps are needed, as well as maximum coordination between us and our partners," Zelenskiy said in a post on X after his call with Starmer.
"We value the determination of the United Kingdom, the United States, and all our partners to end the war."
Ukraine and the European Union have pushed back on proposals that they view as ceding too much to Putin, whose troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022, citing what Moscow called threats to Russia's security from a Ukrainian pivot towards the West.
Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, described the current peace push as "the first more or less realistic attempt to start the war".
"At the same time, I remain extremely sceptical about the implementation of the agreements, even if a truce is reached for a while. And there is virtually no doubt that the new commitments could be devastating for Ukraine," she said.
Fierce fighting is raging along the more than 1,000-km (620-mile) front line along eastern and southern Ukraine, where Russian forces hold around a fifth of the country's territory.
Russian troops are slowly advancing in Ukraine's east, but their summer offensive has so far failed to achieve a major breakthrough, Ukrainian military analysts say.
Ukrainians remain defiant.
"Not a single serviceman will agree to cede territory, to pull out troops from Ukrainian territories," Olesia Petritska, 51, told Reuters as she gestured to hundreds of small Ukrainian flags in the Kyiv central square commemorating fallen soldiers.
.webp)
Comments
Post a Comment