 "Ukraine won’t cede land to Russia for peace, says Zelenskyy ahead of Trump–Putin talks")
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday firmly ruled out giving up any part of the country’s territory, rejecting US suggestions that a peace agreement with Russia might involve land swaps. His comments came as Washington and Moscow prepared for high-level talks aimed at ending the ongoing war.
US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are set to meet on August 15 in Alaska for discussions on resolving the three-year conflict. The planned summit has drawn warnings from both Ukraine and European leaders, who insist Kyiv must be directly involved in any negotiations that affect its sovereignty.
When announcing the meeting on Friday, Trump suggested that “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both” sides could be part of the deal. Although specific terms have not yet been revealed, such an arrangement could require Ukraine to relinquish substantial areas, a prospect Kyiv and its allies argue would embolden Moscow’s aggression rather than bring lasting peace.
“Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier,” Zelensky said on social media hours later.
“Any decisions against us, any decisions without Ukraine, are also decisions against peace. They will achieve nothing,” he said, adding that the war “cannot be ended without us, without Ukraine”.
Zelensky also urged Ukraine’s allies to take “clear steps” towards achieving a sustainable peace, during a call with Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
US 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 Zelenskyy.
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View All”They agreed this would be a vital forum to discuss progress towards securing a just and lasting peace,” the Downing Street spokesperson added.
Zelenskyy rallies allies as Moscow touts “great progress” in Trump envoy talks
Zelenskyy has made a flurry of calls with Ukraine’s allies since Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff’s visit to 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,” Zelenskyy 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.
Kyiv and its Western allies say the invasion is an imperial-style land grab.
Moscow has previously claimed four Ukrainian regions – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – as well as the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed in 2014.
Russian forces do not fully control all the territory in the four regions and Russia is demanding that Ukraine pull out its troops from the parts of all four of them that they still control.
Ukraine says its troops still have a small foothold in Russia’s Kursk region a year after its troops crossed the border to try to gain leverage in any negotiations. Russia said it had expelled Ukraininan troops from Kursk in April.
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 stop 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.
With inputs from agencies
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