President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Saturday flatly rejected President Donald Trump’s proposal that a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia could include “some swapping of territories”, a plan that would in effect mean ceding land to Moscow.
“Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier,” Zelensky said in a video address from his office in Kyiv, several hours after Trump’s remarks, which appeared to overlook Ukraine’s role in the negotiations. “Any decisions made against us, any decisions made without Ukraine, are at the same time decisions against peace,” Zelensky said. “They will bring nothing. These are dead decisions; they will never work.”
His blunt rejection risks angering Trump, who has made a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia one of his signature foreign policy goals, even if it means accepting terms that are unfavourable to Kyiv. Trump has criticised Ukraine for clinging to what he suggested were stubborn cease-fire demands and for being “not ready for peace”.
Trump said on Friday that he would meet President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on August 15 in Alaska to discuss a possible peace deal, with potential land swaps most likely on the agenda.
“We’re going to get some back, and we’re going to get some switched,” he said during an event at the White House. “There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both.”
Trump’s stance clashes with a widely held view in Ukraine against surrendering territory to end the war, which left Zelensky little choice but to firmly reject the suggestion. To do otherwise would probably have exposed him to fierce criticism and become a political bombshell at home.
A recent poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that more than three-quarters of Ukrainians are against transferring Ukrainian-controlled territory to Russia. When it comes to ceding land that includes territory already under Russian control, opposition drops slightly, with a little more than half of Ukrainians against it, “even if this makes the war last longer and threatens the preservation of independence”, the poll says.
But support for land concessions has grown since Ukraine’s failed 2023 counteroffensive, which underscored its inability to retake substantial territory. About 38 per cent of the population thinks ceding land is acceptable now, according to the poll, up from only 10 per cent about two years ago.
Trump did not clarify which territories could be swapped. Russia has demanded that Ukraine give up four regions in the east and south that Moscow claims to have annexed in late 2022, even though some of that territory remains under Ukrainian control. The Kremlin is keen on seizing full control of Luhansk and Donetsk.
New York Times News Service
