Russia rejected swapping occupied territory with Ukraine on Wednesday, February 12, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky floated the idea in an interview with the Guardian.
“This is impossible. Russia has never and will never discuss the topic of exchanging its territory,” Kremlin spokeperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters, ruling out Zelensky’s idea of a swap involving Ukrainian-held parts of Russia’s western Kursk region.
Zelensky said he was ready to swap land in negotiations with Russia in an interview with the Guardian, published on Tuesday, February 11. Zelensky has in the past refused to cede any territory after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But he now says Kyiv is ready for serious talks ahead of a Friday meeting at the Munich Security Conference with US Vice President JD Vance – a vocal critic of US military support to Ukraine.
“We will swap one territory for another,” Zelensky said, adding that he was ready to trade land in Russia’s Kursk region – which Ukraine seized in a surprise offensive last year. He acknowledged that Ukraine would not be able to enjoy security guarantees just with European partners. “Security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees,” he said.
Contracts for US firms
Trump confirmed Monday that he would soon dispatch his special envoy Keith Kellogg, who is tasked with drawing up a proposal to halt the fighting, to Ukraine. The US president is pressing for a swift end to the conflict, while Zelensky is calling for tough security guarantees from Washington as part of any deal.
Kyiv fears that any settlement that does not include hard military commitments, such as NATO membership or the deployment of peacekeeping troops, will allow the Kremlin time to regroup and rearm for a fresh attack. Zelensky has said he would offer US companies lucrative reconstruction contracts in a bid to win over Trump.
“Those who are helping us to save Ukraine will renovate it, with their businesses together with Ukrainian businesses. All these things we are ready to speak about in detail,” he told the Guardian. Ukraine has some of the biggest mineral reserves in Europe and it is “not in the interests of the United States” for those to fall into Russian hands, he said.
“Valuable natural resources where we can offer our partners possibilities that didn’t exist before to invest in them. For us it will create jobs, for American companies it will create profits,” he added.
The Munich meeting comes with Russia advancing across Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, where over the past year it has captured several settlements, most completely flattened by months of Russian bombardments.
Source: Le Monde
