Zelensky is willing to negotiate a ‘territory swap’ with Russia
In an unprecedented move, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, has proposed exchanging territory under the control of his forces inside Russia for Ukrainian regions occupied by Moscow in the event of negotiations taking place.
‘We will exchange one territory for another,’ Zelensky said in an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian. Although he did not specify which Ukrainian territories he would seek to recover, he indicated that ‘all the territories are important, there is no priority’.
Just a few weeks short of three years since the start of the war, Russia occupies around 20% of the territory in eastern and southern Ukraine. The Ukrainian army, for its part, launched a surprise attack last August in the Kursk region of western Russia, where it still controls part of the territory.
The aim of the operation in Kursk was to protect the border areas and to capture territory that could be used as a bargaining chip in future negotiations.
The prospects for peace talks have grown since US President Donald Trump returned to the White House. During the election campaign, Trump said his goal was to ‘end the war,’ although he avoided offering specific details on how he would achieve this. At the same time, his rhetoric would suggest a possible reduction in US financial support for Kiev.
In this sense, Zelensky has emphasised on several occasions that any plan to end the war in Ukraine must include firm security guarantees that prevent future aggression from Moscow.
Regarding key US support, the Ukrainian leader has assured that if Washington withdraws aid to Kiev, Europe alone will not be able to sustain it. ‘There are people who say that Europe could offer security guarantees without the Americans and I always say no. Security guarantees without the United States are not real security guarantees,’ Zelensky explained during the interview.
For his part, Trump has indicated that he will probably meet with Zelensky this week to discuss possible ways to end the conflict. For the time being, the Ukrainian president will discuss the issue with the vice president, JD Vance.
Shortly before this meeting, Trump said in an interview with Fox News that Ukraine ‘could be Russian one day’. ‘Ukraine may or may not make a deal. It may or may not be Russian one day,’ Trump said, stressing that he also wanted to see a return on the investment of US aid to Ukraine, and raised again the idea of an exchange of rare earths from Kiev.
‘They have tremendously valuable land in terms of rare earths, oil and gas, among other things. I want our money to be secure,’ he added.
According to Zelensky, it was he who proposed to Trump the idea of the United States gaining access to Ukraine's rare earth deposits in exchange for financial and security incentives. Ukraine has the largest reserves of uranium and titanium in Europe, and ‘it is not in the interest of the United States’ that these reserves end up in the hands of Russia and are potentially transferred to North Korea, China or Iran, explained the Ukrainian leader.
On the other hand, Trump also reported that he had spoken with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, about putting an end to the conflict, although he did not specify when. Regarding the negotiations, Putin has previously stated that any peace agreement must include Ukraine's recognition of Russia's territorial claims over four regions in the east and south of the country, including areas that are not completely under Moscow's control.
