BURSTUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday said the country would not cede portions of the Donbas region to Russia amid ceasefire talks.
“We will never leave the Donbas" Zelensky told reporters on Tuesday, per NewsNation.
"Everyone forgets the first part of the film [Crimea]," he added.
His comments come days before President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are scheduled to meet in Alaska without Zelensky for peace discussions, which the Ukrainian leader has dismissed.
“Any decisions made against us, any decisions made without Ukraine, are at the same time decisions against peace,” he said Saturday. “They will bring nothing. These are dead decisions; they will never work.”
Trump has already signaled that a “land swap” may be necessary to end the war. Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022 and captured most of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions within Donbas.
The Kremlin has already expressed a desire to keep Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson before committing to ending the violent strikes in Eastern Europe.
However, Zelensky said "Donbas for the Russians is a springboard for a future new offensive.”
“If today we leave Donbas, from our fortifications, from our reliefs, from the heights that we control, we will clearly open a bridgehead for preparing an offensive by the Russians. In a few years, Putin will have an open path to both the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro regions. And not only that. Also to Kharkiv,” he added, according to PoliticoEU.
Kherson was previously occupied by Russia but eventually liberated by Ukraine in 2022.
Ukraine currently controls both Kherson and Zaporizhzhya, which serve as administrative centers in their regions.
While Zelensky has nixed the idea of overturning land masses to end the war, he has also urged both Trump and Putin to consider adding finite conditions to any peace agreements to ensure the war’s end.
“The territorial issue cannot be raised without security guarantees," Zelensky told reporters.