{"id":339130,"date":"2025-08-12T18:38:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T18:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/339130\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T18:38:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T18:38:12","slug":"ukraine-will-not-cede-land-that-could-be-russian-springboard-for-new-war-zelenskyy-says-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/339130\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine will not cede land that could be Russian springboard for new war, Zelenskyy says | Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukraine could not agree to a Russian proposal to give up more of his country\u2019s territory in exchange for a ceasefire because Moscow would use what it gained as a springboard to start a future war.<\/p>\n

The Ukrainian president said he did not believe that Donald Trump supported Russia\u2019s demands, and he expressed hope the US leader would act as an honest mediator when he meets Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday.<\/p>\n

He added there was no sign that Russia was preparing to implement a ceasefire, as reports emerged that small sabotage groups had pierced Ukrainian defences in the eastern Donbas, advancing about six miles in three days. Zelenskyy also warned that Russia was planning new offensives on three parts of the frontline.<\/p>\n

Speaking to journalists in the run-up to the Trump-Putin summit, and a day before a virtual meeting with US and European leaders, Zelenskyy said he believed Putin wanted to dominate his country because he \u201cdoes not want a sovereign Ukraine\u201d.<\/p>\n

It was therefore dangerous, Zelenskyy said, for Ukraine to be forced by the US into accepting Russia\u2019s demand to take over the parts of Donbas it does not control after the Alaska summit. The region sought by Russia amounted to \u201cabout 90,000 square kilometres\u201d of the country, he said.<\/p>\n

Last week Russia indicated it was prepared to consider a ceasefire in the Ukraine war for the first time, in exchange for Ukraine withdrawing from the parts of Donbas it still controlled. Though Trump then suggested that Russia and Ukraine could engage in some \u201cswapping of territories\u201d, Zelenskyy said he understood that Russia was \u201csimply offering not to advance further, not to withdraw from anywhere\u201d and that swaps were not on the table.<\/p>\n

Map<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe will not leave Donbas. We cannot do it,\u201d Zelenskyy said. \u201cFor Russians, Donbas is a springboard for a future new offensive.\u201d The region demanded by Russia was too strategically important to give up, he said, because it was a heavily fortified area that protected Ukraine\u2019s central cities.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have heard nothing \u2013 not a single proposal \u2013 that would guarantee that a new war will not start tomorrow and that Putin will not try to occupy at least Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv\u201d once Russia had gained all of Donbas, Zelenskyy said.<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s leader said he wanted Putin instead to agree to a ceasefire on the current frontlines and for both sides to return all prisoners of war and missing children, before any discussion about territory and the future security of the country. \u201cAny question of territory cannot be separated from security guarantees,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Zelenskyy said he would not be at the summit in Alaska, the first face-to-face meeting between Trump and Putin with both in office since 2018. But he said he hoped it would be followed by \u201ca trilateral meeting\u201d with Trump and Putin, though the Russian leader has so far said he is not willing to meet Zelenskyy.<\/p>\n

The Ukrainian leader also expressed faith in the unpredictable Trump, who he said could act as an honest broker between himself and Putin. \u201cI do not believe that Putin\u2019s proposal is Trump\u2019s proposal,\u201d he said. \u201cI believe that Trump represents the United States of America. He is acting as a mediator \u2013 he is in the middle, not on Russia\u2019s side. Let him not be on our side but in the middle.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he did not know what exactly Putin and Trump were going to discuss in Alaska, saying \u201cprobably there is a bilateral track\u201d of talks about other topics of mutual interest, such as trade, sanctions and business. But he said Putin had scored a diplomatic win in securing the meeting: \u201cHe is seeking, excuse me, photographs. He needs a photo of his meeting with President Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zelenskyy said Russia was desperately trying to show it was winning the war and that the Kremlin wanted \u201cto create a certain narrative, especially in the American media, that Russia is moving forward and Ukraine is losing\u201d by mounting sabotage attacks in the Donbas region.<\/p>\n

He acknowledged that \u201cgroups of Russians advanced about 10 kilometres in several places\u201d although he said: \u201cThey have no equipment, only weapons in their hands,\u201d and said that some had already been killed or captured.<\/p>\n

But the breach is ill-timed from Ukraine\u2019s point of view. In Alaska, Putin is likely to tell Trump that such successes show that Russia is gradually winning the three-year war in the east, and so US future support for Kyiv will be wasted.<\/p>\n

Map showing Russian advances<\/a><\/p>\n

War maps showed two lines of advance east of the town of Dobropillya, and gains of about six miles since Friday. Experts said the next few days would be critical to see if Ukraine could contain the break in the front.<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s military said Russia had concentrated about 110,000 troops in the sector and that the invaders were \u201cbrazenly attempting to infiltrate our defensive lines with sabotage and small infantry groups, regardless of their losses\u201d.<\/p>\n

The military command said in a social media post that reserves had been deployed at the order of Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine\u2019s chief military commander, in an effort to restore the frontlines.<\/p>\n

Residents of Drobopillya and nearby villages are evacuated on Tuesday. Photograph: Pierre Crom\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The Institute for the Study of War said Russian \u201csabotage and reconnaissance groups\u201d had infiltrated Ukrainian-held territory near Dobropillya, a key supply point in the west of the Donetsk region.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is premature to call the Russian advances in the Dobropillya area an operational-level breakthrough,\u201d the ISW said on Monday night. It said the invaders would now try to turn \u201ctactical advances\u201d into something more significant.<\/p>\n

Russia is taking heavy casualties of about 1,000 a day, with 500 killed and 500 wounded on Monday, Zelenskyy said, as it relies heavily on infantry assaults to break Kyiv\u2019s defensive lines.<\/p>\n

Zelenskyy said Ukraine\u2019s casualties on the same day were much smaller \u2013 a total of 340 \u2013 \u201c18 killed and 243 wounded, with 79 missing in action\u201d. But in the past when Moscow\u2019s forces have broken through, Ukraine has frequently proved unable to push them back.<\/p>\n

A former senior Ukrainian army officer, Bohdan Krotevych, said the piercing of Ukraine\u2019s lines had come about because \u201cinstead of reinforcing defensive units with infantry\u201d, senior commanders in Kyiv had prioritised deploying newly mobilised soldiers into assault forces, leaving units already on the frontline weakened.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo stabilise the front, we must reinforce brigades on the line of contact with infantry,\u201d Krotevych said, and he called for Ukraine to urgently strengthen its reserve forces and adopt a defensive strategy rather than try to counter high-risk Russian infantry assaults with its own.<\/p>\n

Dobropillya is a key supply point for the beleaguered towns of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad to the south and the principal cities of Ukrainian-held Donbas to the east from the centre of the country.<\/p>\n

Zelenskyy said Russia was preparing a fresh offensive in the autumn involving nearly 30,000 troops moved from Sumy, in the north-east of Ukraine, \u201cin three directions\u201d on the frontline \u2013 towards Zaporizhzhia in the south and Pokrovsk and the nearby Novopavlika in the south-east.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukraine could not agree to a Russian proposal to give up more of his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-339130","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115017254540472923","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}