{"id":134963,"date":"2025-08-10T18:19:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T18:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/134963\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T18:19:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T18:19:15","slug":"lindsey-graham-says-russia-and-ukraine-would-likely-need-to-swap-land-in-a-ceasefire-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/134963\/","title":{"rendered":"Lindsey Graham says Russia and Ukraine would likely need to swap land in a ceasefire deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 Sen. Lindsey Graham said in an interview on NBC News\u2019 \u201cMeet the Press\u201d that Russia and Ukraine would have to swap some territory to end the war, echoing President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2018s comments about land exchanges. <\/p>\n

\u201cI want to be honest with you, Ukraine is not going to evict every Russian, and Russia is not going to Kyiv, so there will be some land swaps at the end,\u201d Graham, R-S.C., said during Sunday\u2019s interview. <\/p>\n

That idea has been a non-starter for Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that Ukraine would \u201cnot give their land to occupiers.\u201d His comments came after Trump said on Friday that \u201cthere\u2019ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham said land exchanges would only happen \u201cafter you have security guarantees to Ukraine to prevent Russia from doing this again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to tell Putin what happens if he does it a third time,\u201d Graham said, referring to Russia annexing Crimea in 2014<\/a> in addition to Russia\u2019s 2022 invasion. <\/p>\n

Asked during the interview whether it was the right move for Trump to hold a summit with Russia\u2019s President Vladimir Putin in Alaska this Friday in an attempt to broker a ceasefire agreement, Graham said he was \u201cvery okay\u201d with the meeting, later adding that he hoped Zelenskyy could be involved. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t end a war without talking. I do hope that Zelenskyy can be part of the process. I\u2019ll leave that up to the White House,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

NBC News previously reported that the White House was considering inviting <\/a>Zelenskyy to the meeting. Asked on CNN\u2019s \u201cState of the Union\u201d whether Zelenskyy might attend, U.S. ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said, \u201cI certainly think it\u2019s possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly there can\u2019t be a deal that everybody that\u2019s involved in it doesn\u2019t agree to,\u201d Whitaker said Sunday. Referring to the idea of territorial exchange, he \u201cno big chunks or sections are going to be just given that haven\u2019t been fought for or earned on the battlefield.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oksana Markarova, the Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S., said on CBS\u2019 \u201cFace the Nation\u201d that Zelenskyy would be willing to travel to Alaska. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have shown that he is ready to be anywhere to advance the agenda of peace,\u201d Markarova said. \u201cSo if needed, President Zelenskyy of course will be present at the meetings.\u201d <\/p>\n

Markarova also pushed back against the concept of \u201cbuffer zones,\u201d calling it an \u201coutdated\u201d idea. She referred to the frontlines of the war as \u201cthe frontline between evil and good,\u201d saying that the question is whether that boundary would be on Ukraine\u2019s borders or in Europe. <\/p>\n

Graham\u2019s comments on the exchange of territory are a shift from his previous position. In 2023, he said in a statement<\/a> that \u201cThe Ukrainians understand you don\u2019t end wars by giving territory to the aggressor.\u201d The senator also warned at the time that if Putin was not stopped in Ukraine, \u201che will keep going,\u201d increasing the chance that NATO could be drawn into a war.<\/p>\n

Asked on Sunday about those comments, Graham pointed to what he believed should be done to deter Russia from invading Ukraine a third time. He said the U.S. and allies should continue arming Ukraine, put some European forces on the ground, and build up \u201ceconomic integration.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Putin were to invade Ukraine again, he would \u201cbe fighting more than just Ukraine, having some European forces on the ground as trip wires,\u201d Graham said.<\/p>\n

He also pointed to the split of Germany\u2019s capital after World War II into East and West Berlin and later reunification, noting that the city \u201cexisted divided for a very long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview taped before Trump announced the Alaska summit, Vice President JD Vance said a negotiated settlement would probably have elements that neither side likes.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s not going to make anybody super happy,” Vance said. “Both the Russians and the Ukrainians, probably, at the end of the day, are going to be unhappy with it.<\/p>\n

In the interview, which aired Sunday, Vance said Trump “needs to force President Putin and President Zelenskyy, really, to sit down, to figure out their differences.”<\/p>\n

“The way to peace is to have a decisive leader sit down and force people to come together,” Vance said. <\/p>\n

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said in an interview on ABC\u2019s \u201cThis Week\u201d that Ukraine must be involved in moves to end the war.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s hope that Friday will be an important step in that process,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need Ukraine at the table. It will be about territory. It will be, of course, about security guarantees, but also about the absolute need to acknowledge that Ukraine decides on its own future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rutte said neither Ukraine\u2019s troop levels nor NATO\u2019s presence \u201con the eastern flank in countries like Latvia, Estonia and Finland\u201d should be limited.<\/p>\n

Separately, former national security adviser John Bolton, who served during Trump\u2019s first term, criticized the location of the Trump-Putin summit. \u201cHolding this meeting on American soil\u201d was \u201clegitimizing a pariah leader of a rogue state,\u201d he said on ABC\u2019s \u201cThis Week.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s allowed Putin to get first mover advantage by putting his peace plan on the table first,\u201d Bolton said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 Sen. Lindsey Graham said in an interview on NBC News\u2019 \u201cMeet the Press\u201d that Russia and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":134964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,50,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-134963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115005853957417013","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}