floated the idea<\/a> of Ukraine offering Donbas in return for Russia halting its offensive in the south, a person familiar with the matter told POLITICO.<\/p>\n\u201cAny issue of territories cannot be separated from security guarantees. Otherwise, now they want to give them about 9,000 square kilometers, which is about 30 percent of the Donetsk region, and this is a bridgehead for their new aggression,\u201d Zelenskyy said.<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian president also slammed the idea of a territorial exchange as a real estate deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not going to surrender my country, because I have no right to do so,\u201d Zelenskyy said. \u201cThe state is what, private property? 30 percent of the Donetsk region is what, my private property? Or yours? Or someone else\u2019s? The exchange of territories is a very complex issue that cannot be separated from security guarantees for Ukraine, for our sovereign state and our people.\u201d<\/p>\n
While supporting Trump\u2019s goal of ending the war quickly, he said a lasting ceasefire is needed before any substantive talks. \u201cAny productive talks without [Ukraine] at the table will not work for us. They are possible, but they will not be accepted by us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s president said he does not know what Trump will discuss with Putin during the bilateral meeting, but hopes that Trump will push for a ceasefire \u2014 and ideally also impose sanctions. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIf today we leave Donbas, from our fortifications, from our reliefs, from the heights that we control, we…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[32,2000,299,805,660,809,332,1771,657,49,333,2601,335],"class_list":{"0":"post-339283","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-foreign-policy","12":"tag-kremlin","13":"tag-negotiations","14":"tag-russia","15":"tag-u-s-foreign-policy","16":"tag-ukraine","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-vladimir-putin","19":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","20":"tag-war-in-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115017560029634205","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339283","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=339283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}