Zelensky rejects Trump’s suggestion that Ukraine may cede territory to Russia to secure peace

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected out of hand a suggestion made by US President Donald Trump on Friday that Kyiv would be willing to cede some of its territory to Moscow as part of a peace deal to end the three-and-a-half-year-long war in Ukraine.

In a video message to the Ukrainian people that was posted on Saturday morning, Zelensky said the “answer to the Ukrainian territorial question is already in the Constitution of Ukraine,” referring to its second article, which states that the “territory of Ukraine within its present border is indivisible and inviolable”.

“No one will deviate from this — and no one will be able to,” Zelensky continued, before vowing that the Ukrainian people would not gift their land to an occupier.

Zelensky’s firm rejection of any suggestion that Ukraine could cede some of its territory to placate the Kremlin came just hours after Trump announced that he would meet with Vladimir Putin in Alaska next Friday to discuss ways to end the war in Ukraine.

At the signing of a historic peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan at the White House on Friday, Trump suggested that an eventual peace deal he hoped to broker between Russia and Ukraine could 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 said of his plan for a lasting peace in Ukraine, without giving any further details.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that the Kremlin had furnished the Trump administration with the terms of a ceasefire it would be prepared to accept in Ukraine. According to EU and Ukrainian sources, these terms would require Kyiv to withdraw its troops from the Donetsk region, after which the frontline would be frozen, before negotiations for a final peace deal begin.

Under the Russian proposal, the Luhansk region and the annexed Crimea Peninsula would both remain under Moscow’s control, though the proposed fate of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, both of which are partially under Russsian occupation, was not detailed.

Zelensky’s unequivocal rejection of Trump’s plan risks angering the thin-skinned US president, whose relationship with Zelensky has significantly improved in recent months largely down to Kyiv’s painstaking efforts not to contradict Washington in any way, while heaping praise on the US leader following the disastrous public spat between the two leaders at the White House in February.