Zelenskyy rejects suggestion that Ukraine cede territory to Russia

KYIV – Ukraine will reject any proposal that involves ceding territory to Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday, hours after U.S. President Donald Trump suggested “some swapping of territories” to end Russia’s war on Ukraine.

“The answer to the Ukrainian territorial question is already in the constitution of Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said in a video address Saturday morning. “No one will retreat from this, and no one can. Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier.”

Trump has suggested a territorial swap as he and Russian President Vladimir Putin finalized details for an in-person meeting Friday in Alaska – symbolic as a former part of the Russian Empire.

Trump did not say whether Zelenskyy was invited to the meeting. An official briefed on the negotiations, said Zelenskyy had not yet been invited.

Russia has proposed that Kyiv relinquish the Donbas area of eastern Ukraine for a ceasefire without offering anything in return, according to a second person briefed on the negotiations.

European and Ukrainian officials were scrambling to respond to Trump’s reversal. Days before he and Putin announced the meeting Friday, he was threatening to impose tougher sanctions on Russia.

Britain on Saturday hosted a meeting of national security advisers from Europe, Ukraine and the United States led by Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Vice President JD Vance.

Around midnight in Europe, leaders of Britain, Finland, France, Germany, Poland and the European Union issued a forceful joint statement encouraging Trump’s peacemaking efforts but reiterating that Russia was solely responsible for the war and urging respect for Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty.

“We reiterate that Russia’s unprovoked and illegal invasion of Ukraine is a flagrant violation of the UN Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, the Budapest Memorandum, and successive Russian commitments,” read the statement issued by U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Finnish President Alex Stubb, French President Emanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and European Commission President Ursual von der Leyen. “We underline our unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity.”

The European leaders called for “robust and credible security guarantees for Ukraine” and agreed with Ukraine’s demand for a ceasefire, or reduction in hostilities, before any negotiations could start.

“Meaningful negotiations can only take place in the context of a ceasefire or reduction of hostilities. The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine,” the leaders said, adding: “We remain committed to the principle that international borders must not be changed by force. The current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations.”

A U.S. official described the conversations as productive.

“Today’s hours-long meetings produced significant progress toward President Trump’s goal of bringing an end to the war in Ukraine, ahead of President Trump and President Putin’s upcoming meeting in Alaska,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Zelensky described the conversations in Britain as “constructive.”

“All our messages were conveyed,” he said in a statement. “Our arguments are being heard. The risks are being taken into account. The path to peace for Ukraine must be determined together – and only together – with Ukraine.” The discussion followed days of confusion over a meeting in Moscow between Putin and U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff. Putin’s suggestion that he was willing to halt the Russian attack on the key regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson was understood by the Americans as an offer to withdraw, according to the second person briefed.

But Moscow, having secured its prized land bridge from Russian territory to illegally annexed Crimea, clarified on Friday that it was not willing to pull back its troops, the person said. Russia had since offered to give back a “sliver of land” it holds in the regions of Sumy and Kharkiv, the person said, but the territory was not significant.

Russia initially proposed meeting in the United Arab Emirates or in Saudi Arabia, the official said, and the United States then proposed Europe, which the Kremlin rejected, before the two countries settled on Alaska. Putin’s travel is restricted because the International Criminal Court in 2023 issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest on allegations of involvement in the abduction of children from Ukraine during the war. Like the UAE and Saudi Arabia, the U.S. is not a party to the court.

A trip to Alaska may give Putin the chance to make an important domestic visit to the nearby Kamchatka Peninsula, where there was a recent earthquake and volcanic eruption.

The planned meeting is a win for Putin, who gets an official visit to the U.S. despite failing to agree to Trump’s longtime demands for a ceasefire.

There are growing fears in Ukraine and many European countries that this meeting will only further solidify Putin’s gains in his deadly war on Ukraine. Kyiv has long insisted that decisions about Ukraine cannot be made without Ukraine. Russia attacked Ukraine again with drones and missiles in the past day, killing at least eight people, including civilians on a bus near Kherson.

European supporters rallied behind Kyiv and Zelensky on Saturday. Starmer, the British prime minister, spoke with Zelensky by phone on Saturday morning and “agreed that we must keep up the pressure on Putin to end his illegal war,” the British government said in a statement.

Zelensky said he spoke with France’s Macron, another key ally, and said that he was “grateful for the support.” He added: “It is truly important that the Russians do not succeed in deceiving anyone again.”

According to a person briefed on the meeting in the U.K., who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks, the Europeans were forwarding the idea that any withdrawal of forces from Ukrainian territory should occur on an inch-for-inch basis, the person said.

A Ukrainian withdrawal from Donbas, for example, would be matched by a Russian withdrawal from the same amount of territory in Zaporizhzhia or Kherson.

Trump’s suggestion that Ukraine and Russia might swap territory had caused confusion, the official who was briefed on the negotiations said, adding, “What exactly can be swapped?”

Ukraine controls only a small toehold in Russia’s western Kursk region. Russia, meanwhile, controls about a fifth of Ukraine’s sovereign territory. Russia has repeatedly demanded that Kyiv withdraw from several of the Ukrainian regions that Russia only partially controls – a demand that Ukraine categorically refuses.

Putin, the official said, is acting “like Hitler who received some lands and wanted more.” Some U.S. officials appear ready to agree to his proposal to seize more Ukrainian land in exchange for weak words on peace, the official said.

Trump, who has in the past blamed Ukraine for Russia’s invasion, has recently softened his rhetoric on Kyiv and toughened up on Russia. But he agreed to host Putin after his special envoy Steve Witkoff visited Moscow this week for a meeting with the Russian president, stirring fears that he could be leaning toward a decision that will compromise Ukraine and ultimately prolong the war.

Zelensky, who has worked hard to recover his relationship with Trump after a disastrous Oval Office meeting early this year, appeared to direct some of his comments solidifying Ukraine’s position Saturday directly at Washington. His firm stance is likely to be celebrated at home but could risk potential blowback from an unpredictable Trump.

“The Ukrainian people deserve peace. But all partners must understand what a worthy peace is. This war must be ended, and Russia must end it. Russia started it and is dragging it out, ignoring all deadlines, and that is the problem, not anything else,” Zelensky said. “Any decisions against us, any decisions without Ukraine, are simultaneously decisions against peace. They will bring nothing. These are dead decisions; they will never work.”

He added: “We are ready, together with President Trump, together with all partners, to work for a real and, most importantly, lasting peace – a peace that will not collapse because of Moscow’s desires.”

Reaching any territorial agreement between Russia and Ukraine will be extremely complicated. Ukraine does not want to reward Russia for its invasion and Russia expects Ukraine to readily give up even territory that Ukraine still controls.

Russia invaded and illegally annexed Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula, in 2014. It has since seized all of the Luhansk region, much of the Donetsk region and parts of the Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv regions. It is also pushing over the border into Ukraine’s Sumy region, which borders Kursk, the Russian region where Ukraine seized 500 square miles last year. Kyiv has since retreated from all but about four square miles of that land.

Russia has already laid claim to the regional capitals in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, cities it does not control. Ukraine retook Kherson in 2022, and Russia never reached the city of Zaporizhzhia.

With a Ukrainian military victory increasingly unlikely, Ukrainians are growing more open to a deal to end the war. But any real decisions that cede territory will still be deeply unpopular in Ukraine, where millions of people have been displaced and at least tens of thousands of troops have been killed in ground fighting.