The Ukrainian chief stated territorial points must be mentioned solely with safety ensures.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has dominated out withdrawing troops from the contested Donbas area as a situation for a cease-fire and peace talks with Russia, warning that such a transfer would give the latter a strategic benefit for future offensives.
“For Russians, Donbas is a bridgehead for a future new offensive,” Zelensky informed reporters in Kyiv on Aug. 12, reported nationwide information company Ukrinform. “Any issue of territories cannot be separated from security guarantees.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin is demanding that Kyiv pull again its forces from Donetsk and Luhansk provinces—which collectively make up the Donbas area—in trade for Russia halting advances in different Ukrainian territories.
Elements of Donbas bordering Russia have been held by two pro-Russian separatist republics since 2014, lengthy earlier than the full-scale struggle broke out in February 2022. After greater than three years of heavy combating, nearly all of the area is now below Russian occupation.
Based on Zelenskyy, Ukraine nonetheless controls roughly 30 p.c of Donetsk province, or about 3,500 sq. miles, and has established fortified defensive traces and strategic excessive floor there.
Abandoning these positions, he stated, would strip Kyiv of essential defenses and invite renewed Russian assaults.
“If we leave Donbas today—our fortifications, our terrain, the heights we control—we will clearly open a bridgehead for the Russians to prepare their offensive,” he stated.
Zelenskyy’s feedback come forward of an Aug. 15 assembly between Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump in Anchorage, Alaska. The summit will mark Putin’s first go to to the US in a decade and the primary in-person assembly between the 2 leaders since Trump returned to the White Home.
Trump has urged “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both” Russia and Ukraine. Whereas no phrases have been formally confirmed, such a deal might contain Ukraine recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and Russia giving up a number of the Ukrainian land it has seized since 2022.
“Russia has occupied a big portion of Ukraine,” Trump stated on Aug. 11. “They’ve occupied some very prime territory. We’re going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine.”
Trump described the Aug. 15 talks as a “feel-out meeting” to gauge the prospects for peace. “If it’s a fair deal, I will reveal it to the European Union leaders and to the NATO leaders and also to President Zelenskyy,” he stated. “I may say, ‘lots of luck, keep fighting,’ or I may say we can make a deal.”
The White Home reaffirmed on Aug. 12 that the assembly can be a “listening exercise” for Trump, indicating there is not going to be a direct breakthrough within the peace course of.
“The goal of this meeting for the president is to walk away with a better understanding of how we can end this war,” White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated in a press briefing.
“I think the president of the United States getting in the room with the president of Russia, sitting face-to-face rather than speaking over the telephone, will give this president the best indication of how to end this war and where this is headed,” she stated.
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