Ahead of Trump-Putin meeting, Zelensky says he won't exchange land for peace

Mint

4 days ago

KYIV, Ukraine—President Trump's face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday will heap pressure on one person not at the table: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Zelensky has tried to position himself as the party who was eager for a peace deal—something Trump has sought to broker since he returned to office this year. Concerns run high in Kyiv that Trump will seek to strike a deal with Putin that will be disadvantageous to Ukraine, or at least be persuaded by Putin that Zelensky is the one in the way of an end to the bloodshed.
Zelensky told reporters Tuesday that he was ready to meet directly with Putin—a step the Russian leader has refused to take—and offered subtle indications that he could be willing to discuss delicate domestic issues such as territorial concessions. But he also shrugged off the suggestion that a land swap could be part of a cease-fire agreement in the near term, an idea that has recently been floated in calls between various world leaders.
He said he didn't believe that Moscow was prepared to give up territory it currently controls in southern Ukraine in exchange for more territory in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region. Instead, Zelensky said, he believed Russia was asking Ukraine to withdraw from territory it currently holds in exchange for Russia agreeing to a cease-fire.
Zelensky has said for months that he would accept an unconditional interim cease-fire.
'In my view, essentially, they are offering simply not to advance any further," Zelensky said of Russia. 'This is a very conditional exchange."
Ukrainian soldiers and army engineers inspect new fortifications in the Donetsk region of Ukraine.A Ukrainian soldier in a bunker which forms part of the new defensive fortifications built in eastern Ukraine.
Zelensky's comments underscore the difficult position that the coming Trump-Putin meeting has put him in. He is wary of any cease-fire proposal that Putin might offer without Ukraine at the table. At the same time, he must be careful not to provoke Trump's anger—as he did during his disastrous trip to Washington in February—by appearing not to take peace talks seriously. On Wednesday, Zelensky arrived in Germany, where he will join German Chancellor Friedrich Merz for a video call with Trump and other European leaders.
Volodymyr Fesenko, a Kyiv-based political analyst at the independent think tank Penta Center for Political Studies, said the meeting posed several potential risks for Zelensky. Putin will aim to negotiate a cease-fire with Trump with conditions that are favorable to Russia, which Trump could then pressure Ukraine to accept. But just as great a risk, he said, was that Putin would try to turn Trump—who has shown more sympathy toward his Russian counterpart than other recent presidents—against Ukraine and toward Moscow. The U.S. leader might then cut off military or economic support for Kyiv, or lift sanctions on Russia.
Already, in the lead-up to the meeting, Trump halted plans to hit Russia with additional sanctions. In addition, Trump criticized Zelensky earlier this week after the Ukrainian leader initially dismissed the idea of a land swap. 'I get along with Zelensky, but I disagree with what he's done," Trump said. 'Very, very severely disagree."
'Putin's goal in this case is not to end the war, but to form a negative attitude toward Ukraine and Zelensky, to cause a quarrel between Trump and Zelensky," Fesenko said. 'A real problem has already emerged—Trump's irritation with Zelensky's position."
Some Western officials see signals that Putin could be more prepared for serious peace talks than he has been in the past. In a recent discussion with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, Putin didn't mention some of his previous demands, such as the demilitarization of Ukraine or Ukrainian withdrawal from four regions that Russia partly controls and now claims as its own, The Wall Street Journal reported. Instead, according to officials briefed on the discussion, Putin had said that he would be open to a cease-fire if Ukraine withdrew from only its two easternmost regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Russia already controls all but a small sliver of the Luhansk region, and some Western officials hope that Russian-held territory in southern Ukraine could be handed back if Kyiv withdraws from the parts of the Donetsk region it still controls.
Though Ukrainians have grown more willing to make concessions to end the war since the full-scale invasion began in 2022, public opinion polls show they remain opposed to giving up territory. A June survey from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found 52% of Ukrainians opposed to territorial concessions, with 38% willing to accept territorial losses as part of a peace deal.
Though Zelensky has repeatedly dismissed the idea of territorial concessions, his comments on Tuesday indicated, at the very least, a willingness to discuss it.
'I am not ready to discuss it over the phone," he said of 'the territorial question." 'These are serious matters to be decided at the leaders' level."
So far, Putin has declined to meet directly with Zelensky, who he has tried to paint as an illegitimate leader who shouldn't be recognized.
Zelensky has also, since early in the war, insisted that security guarantees—provided by the West—must be part of any peace agreement, since Russia has repeatedly violated earlier cease-fire pacts.
Residents of Dnipro, Ukraine, fled their homes after Russian rockets hit a nearby building in June.
In his comments on Tuesday, he didn't mention membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—long his priority, but one which most analysts say isn't realistic in the short term. Instead, he insisted that Europe would have to play an important role in any peace negotiations. European leaders have been frozen out of the Trump-Putin meeting on Friday, and Zelensky noted that in recent months it is Europe—not the U.S.—that has taken on most of the cost of helping fund and arm Ukraine.
'The presence of Europe in one form or another is very important," Zelensky said. 'Ultimately no one except Europe is currently providing us with security guarantees. Even financially—funding the needs of our army, which is a security guarantee."
Write to Ian Lovett at [e-mail]