Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday bluntly rejected President Donald Trump’s suggestion that Kyiv would be required to give up territory as part of a peace deal with Russia.
“Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier,” Zelensky said, just hours after Trump announced that he would meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week in Alaska, without any Ukrainian representatives present, to discuss bringing an end to the war in Ukraine.
Zelensky appeared to bristle at both the suggestion of ceding territory and at the prospect of talks being held without Ukraine.
“Any decisions made against us, any decisions made without Ukraine, are at the same time decisions against peace. They will bring nothing. These are dead decisions; they will never work,” Zelensky said in a video address. He added that Ukraine “will not give Russia any awards for what it has done.”
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President Trump announced at the White House on Friday that he would meet with Putin on August 15 in Alaska, which was once part of the Russian Empire before its purchase by the United States in 1867. He said that an eventual peace deal between Ukraine and Russia would include “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both.”
“We’re going to get some back, and we’re going to get some switched,” Trump added.
The talks in Alaska would be the first between sitting U.S. and Russian presidents since Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva in June 2021.
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As he has done in the past when the issue of ceding occupied Ukrainian territory has been raised, Zelensky cited his country’s Constitution—which states that its territory cannot be given away— in rejecting the proposal.
“The answer to Ukraine’s territorial question is already in the Constitution of Ukraine,” he said. “No one will step back from this, nor will anyone be able to.”
Trump’s announcement of peace talks with Putin came on the day of a deadline he had set for the Russian leader to agree to a ceasefire or else face “very severe tariffs” and a new wave of sanctions designed to cripple its oil trade and financial lifelines.
The Kremlin confirmed the summit in a statement released online, stating that the two leaders would “focus on discussing options for achieving a long-term peaceful resolution to the Ukrainian crisis.”
