The Kremlin said on Wednesday that Russia will never discuss trading the Ukrainian territory it holds for areas in Russia’s western Kursk region held by Kyiv.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s new defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, signalled a new and blunt U.S. approach to the three-year war, delivered at a meeting of NATO allies in Brussels.
On the land swap, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the Guardian newspaper he planned to offer Russia a straight territory exchange to help bring an end to the war, including offering pockets of Kursk that Ukraine holds.
“We will swap one territory for another,” Zelenskyy said, adding that he did not know which part of Russian-occupied territory Ukraine would ask for back.
“I don’t know, we will see. But all our territories are important, there is no priority,” he said.
Facing exhaustion and North Korean troops, these soldiers fighting for Ukraine say the war needs to end. A CBC News team spoke to them before they headed back to the front line, trying to hold territory seized in Russia’s Kursk region.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Moscow categorically rejects all offers to trade territory.
“This is impossible,” he told reporters at a daily briefing. “Russia has never discussed and will not discuss the exchange of its territory.”
Russia controls just under 20 per cent of Ukraine, or more than 112,000 square kilometres, while Ukraine controls around 450 square kilometres of the Kursk region, according to open-source maps of the battlefield.
In 2024, Russian forces gained ground in Ukraine at the fastest rate since 2022, the year Russia invaded. But Russian gains have come at the cost of heavy, though undisclosed, losses in men and equipment.
Prospects for renewed peace negotiations to end the war have increased after U.S. President Donald Trump said he had been in contact with Kyiv and Moscow. Zelenskyy said on Tuesday that Ukraine would soon hold talks with U.S. officials.
Doubts about NATO membership
U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday that Washington does not see NATO membership for Ukraine as “a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement” to end the war.
He also told Washington’s NATO allies that they would have to step up and assume greater responsibility for Europe’s security. Ukraine’s security guarantees should be backed by “capable European and non-European troops,” the Pentagon chief said.
“If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non-NATO mission and they should not be covered under Article 5,” he said, referring to the alliance’s mutual defence clause.
On the campaign trail last year, Trump railed against the significant military aid that Joe Biden’s administration provided to Ukraine since Russian troops invaded in February 2022. The total has been estimated at $65 billion US.
Hegseth also said that a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders was unrealistic.
“Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering,” he added.
In 2014, conflict in eastern Ukraine began after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution. Russia soon annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine and then backed pro-Russian separatists in an armed insurgency against Ukrainian forces in the eastern Donbas region.
In an interview with Fox News earlier this week, Trump did not appear to give full-throated support for Ukraine’s future sovereignty.
“They may make a deal, they may not make a deal. They may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday,” he said. Trump has also said the U.S. would like access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals in exchange for support.
During his first term, Trump suggested to Zelenskyy in a phone call that the Ukrainian leader should co-operate in efforts to discredit Biden. U.S. aid to Ukraine was delayed. Democrats impeached Trump for what they said was a quid pro quo, but Trump was subsequently acquitted in the Senate, avoiding removal from office.
Deadly attack in Kyiv
Earlier on Wednesday, Dmitry Medvedev dismissed as “nonsense” Kyiv’s proposal to trade pockets of Russian territory it holds in exchange for Moscow-controlled parts of Ukraine.
Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012 and is now deputy chairman of the country’s security council, said Russia can achieve “peace through strength.” That includes through drone and missile strikes, which hit Kyiv on Wednesday.
The pre-dawn missile salvo on the Ukrainian capital killed at least one civilian and injured four others, sparking several fires in the city of three million, Ukrainian officials said.
Ukraine’s air force said it shot down six of seven ballistic missiles launched in the attack. Out of 123 drones, the military shot down 71 and likely used electronic countermeasures against 40 more.
An overnight attack also damaged critical infrastructure and injured two people in the northern region of Chernihiv, local officials said.
