Ukraine will not allow its sovereign territories to be ceded to Russia: Zelenskyy

ISTANBUL

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday that any negotiations involving potentially ceding his country's Russian-controlled territories would only serve to prolong the Ukraine war.

“If we start talking about Crimea, about our sovereign territories, etc., we enter the format that Russia wants, which is prolonging the war,” Zelenskyy said during a briefing in Kyiv in response to a question on reports of such a provision in a US peace deal, according to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

Zelenskyy argued that to avoid repeating the outcomes of the Minsk agreements, they must look into the settlement of the conflict by addressing it as a "big problem" that needs to be resolved in parts.

"If we do not want to play this Minsk 3, 4, 5 and a copy of the Normandy format, but with a different number of victims...then we must look at this war as a pie and divide this big problem into pieces if we really want to settle something," he said.

The Minsk agreements were a series of agreements aimed at securing a ceasefire between the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian separatists in southeastern Ukraine. They were signed in the Belarusian capital Minsk in 2014 and 2015.

However, their implementation was stalled, with both sides accusing each other of violations.

Zelenskyy said that prolonging the war only benefits Russia, reiterating Kyiv's call for further pressure on Moscow.

Earlier, The Washington Post reported that the US has proposed formally recognizing Russia's annexation of Crimea as part of a broader peace agreement to end the Ukraine war.