Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected territorial concessions to Russia as part of a peace deal, speaking out after President Donald Trump said in advance of a planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin that “swapping of territories” could be part of an agreement to end the war.
“Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupier,” Zelenskyy said in a video released Aug. 9.
Trump and Putin are set to meet in Alaska Aug. 15 to discuss ending the three-year conflict. The Trump administration has struggled to broker a peace deal, with Trump increasingly lashing out at Putin and threatening financial repercussions if he doesn’t come to the table.
Trump said Aug. 8 during a White House event that both Russia and Ukraine would have to give up territory to reach a deal.
“You are looking at territory that has been fought over for 3.5 years,” Trump said. “We’re looking at that. But we’re looking at swapping. We’re going to get some back,” referring to Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia. “We’re going to get some switched. They’ll be some swapping of territories.”
Yet Zelenskyy is strongly opposing ceding land to Russia and added in a series of social media posts Aug. 9 that the war “can’t be ended without us, without Ukraine” and that any decisions made “without Ukraine, are at the same time decisions against peace.”
“They will not achieve anything,” Zelenskyy added. “These are stillborn decisions. They are unworkable decisions.”
Talks have been floated for months and were initially supposed to include Zelenskyy, with Trump facilitating the negotiations. When that didn’t make progress, Trump said on Aug. 7 that he was open to meeting Putin without Zelenskyy’s presence being a prerequisite.
Then-President Joe Biden is the last U.S. leader to meet with Putin, during a 2021 summit in Switzerland. Trump and Putin met in Finland in 2018. Both meetings took place before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Putin claims four Ukrainian regions – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – as well as the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which he annexed in 2014. His forces do not fully control all the territory in the four regions.
Trump’s meeting with Putin could be a pivotal moment in his push for an end to the Ukraine war. He has frequently berated the Russia leader in recent months and is threatening to impose new sanctions and tariffs against Moscow and countries that buy its exports unless Putin agrees to end the conflict, the deadliest in Europe since World War Two.
But with the Putin-Trump summit approaching, it is unclear whether those sanctions will take effect or will be delayed or cancelled.
The administration took a step toward punishing Moscow’s oil customers on August 6, imposing an additional 25% tariff on goods from India over its imports of Russian oil, marking the first financial penalty aimed at Russia in Trump’s second term.
Contributing: Lauren Villagran, Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, Francesa Chambers
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ukraine president rejects ceding land after Trump floats Russia swap
