The Washington Post -- Zelensky rejects Trump’s suggestion that Ukraine cede territory to Russia - President Donald Trump, who is due to meet President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, suggested Ukraine and Russia could swap some territory to achieve peace. Updated August 9, 2025 at 9:27 a.m. EDTtoday at 9:27

 The Washington Post 

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

President Donald Trump, who is due to meet President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, suggested Ukraine and Russia could swap some territory to achieve peace.

Updated

August 9, 2025 at 9:27 a.m. EDTtoday at 9:27 a.m. EDT

6 min

From left, Presidents Volodymyr Zelensky, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. (AFP/Getty Images)

By Siobhán O'Grady

KYIV — Ukraine will reject any proposal that involves ceding territory to Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday, hours after U.S. President Donald Trump suggested “some swapping of territories” to end Russia’s war on Ukraine and confirmed he would meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week.

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

Trump’s comments suggesting a territorial swap came as he and Putin finalized details for an in-person meeting on Friday, which will be held in Alaska — symbolic due to its former place in the Russian Empire.

Trump did not say whether Zelensky was invited to the meeting. However, an official briefed on the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about sensitive political talks, said Zelensky had not yet been invited.

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.

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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 appeared to rally behind Kyiv and Zelensky on Saturday. Britain said that it was holding a meeting of national security advisers from Europe, Ukraine and the U.S., hosted by British Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Vice President JD Vance, who is in Britain.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer 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 added in a statement.

Zelensky said he spoke with French President Emmanuel 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.”

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 around 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.

What readers are saying

The comments overwhelmingly support President Zelensky's firm stance against ceding any Ukrainian territory to Russia, emphasizing the importance of Ukraine's sovereignty and the need for international support. Many express skepticism about Donald Trump's involvement in... Show more

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