Kyiv would be prepared to exchange Russian territory seized in its Kursk offensive last year in return for Ukrainian land under Russian control, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday. He also told the UK’s Guardian newspaper that security guarantees that did not involve the US would not be “real” guarantees.
Those guarantees would be a deal breaker with Russia.
The seized territories:
Zelensky will meet US Vice President JD Vance on Friday at the Munich Security Conference, the Ukrainian leader’s spokesman told AFP, as Washington pushes for an end to the nearly three-year war with Russia.
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Vance has been a frequent critic of US support to Ukraine.
“There are voices which say that Europe could offer security guarantees without the Americans, and I always say no,” Zelensky told the Guardian newspaper in an interview published on the UK newspaper’s website on Tuesday.
“Security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees,” he said.
“We will swap one territory for another,” he said, adding that he did not know which territories he would ask for in return.
“I don’t know, we will see. But all our territories are important; there is no priority,” he said.
Russia says it has annexed five regions of Ukraine – Crimea in 2014 and then Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk, and Zaporizhzhia in 2022 – though it does not have full control over them.
Zelensky wants to join NATO and have US troops in Ukraine. That better be rejected. If Europe or, more appropriately, the UN wants to have their troops in Ukraine, then great.
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