Ukraine will not “gift” land to Russia as part of a ceasefire deal, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday morning, quickly rejecting a suggestion by Donald Trump as the U.S. president prepares to meet with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
“The answer to the Ukrainian territorial question already is in the Constitution of Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post. “No one will deviate from this — and no one will be able to. Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupier,” he said.
His statement came after Trump said on Friday that there will be “some swapping of territories” as part of a ceasefire deal. Trump is preparing to meet with Putin next Friday in Alaska to discuss a truce in the Ukraine war.
Under the proposal being floated by the Trump administration, Russia would agree to a freeze of the war along the contact line in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where Moscow controls less land than in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, a person familiar with the matter told POLITICO.
In return, Russia would be allowed to keep the Donbas, said the person, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, as others in this article.
U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff returned from a meeting with Putin earlier this week and told Trump that the Russian president had presented the terms under which the Kremlin would agree to stop hostilities in Ukraine, a White House official told POLITICO.
The official declined to describe Russia’s terms, but Trump said land swaps between Russia and Ukraine are under discussion.
“It’s complicated,” Trump said Friday in the Oval Office. “There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both, but we’ll be talking about that.”
Trump is planning to meet Putin in Alaska on Aug. 15. A senior European official attributed Putin’s willingness to meet Trump to joint pressure from Washington and its allies.
“It does not mean a deal or a truce has been agreed upon,” said the White House official. “The president is discussing it with all the relevant parties.”
Zelenskyy said in his statement early Saturday that Ukraine is “ready to work together with President Trump.” But he said that decisions made without Ukraine are “unworkable.”
“Any decisions that are against us, any decisions that are without Ukraine, are at the same time decisions against peace,” Zelenskyy said. “They will not achieve anything. These are stillborn decisions.”
Megan Messerly, Felicia Schwartz and Myah Ward contributed reporting.
