Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy rejected the idea that Kyiv would make territorial concessions to Russia after US leader Donald Trump suggested that the end of the three-year-war would involve territorial concessions.
Speaking on Saturday Zelenskiy said his country was ready for peace talks with Russia, however noted that Ukraine’s ceding its lands was counter to peace. “Ukraine will not give Russia any awards for what it has done,” he said, adding that the war “cannot be ended without us, without Ukraine.”
His comments came after Trump said that he would meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska next week even if Putin will not meet with Zelenskiy, stoking fears that Kyiv might be left out of negotiations. Trump also said “there’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both” Ukraine and Russia and that the issue would be discussed soon but he gave no further details. Trump told reporters that the meeting “would have been sooner, but I guess there’s security arrangements that unfortunately people have to make”. Responding to Trump’s comments, Zelenskiy said “Any decisions that are without Ukraine are at the same time decisions against peace; they will not bring anything.” The highly-anticipated meeting between Putin and Trump is seen as a breakthrough to solve Europe’s biggest conflict.
Trump’s remarks about the upcoming meeting with Putin comes after Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Friday that the Russia-Ukraine conflict could soon “freeze” after communication with Zelenskiy who spoke with Trump and European leaders.
“There are certain signals, and we also have an intuition, that perhaps a freeze in the conflict -I don’t want to say the end, but a freeze in the conflict - is closer than it is further away. There are hopes for this,’ Donald Tusk said during a presser.
Bloomberg news agency reported on Friday that the US and Russia were preparing a peace deal that would cement Russia’s territorial gains in Ukraine, in effect freezing the battle lines in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Under the deal Kyiv would have to cede to Russia its eastern Donbas region and Crimea peninsula.
