Zelensky is willing to negotiate territory with Russia and warned that Europe cannot replace US support
The Ukrainian president said he was prepared to negotiate with Moscow, and suggested he would try to keep Trump on his side by offering lucrative reconstruction contracts and investment concessions in the country to American companies.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Tuesday that if his US counterpart Donald Trump withdraws aid to Ukraine, Europe alone will not be able to sustain it.
The Ukrainian also said that if Trump succeeds in bringing Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table, he plans to propose a direct exchange of territories. He said Kyiv would give up the territory it has controlled in Russia’s Kursk region since the start of a surprise offensive six months ago.
“We will exchange one territory for another,” Zelensky said, although he admitted that he does not yet know which Russian-occupied area Ukraine will demand in exchange. “I don’t know, we’ll see. But all our territories are important, there is no priority,” he added.
“There are voices saying that Europe could provide security guarantees without the Americans, and I always say no. Security guarantees without the United States are not real security guarantees,” the Ukrainian president said in an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian .
Trump has reiterated his intention to end the war in Ukraine, but skeptics fear that a moderate US deal would force Kiev to give in to the maximalist demands of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Zelensky said he was ready to negotiate as long as Ukraine was in a “position of power,” and suggested he would try to keep Trump on side by offering lucrative reconstruction contracts and investment concessions to American companies in the country.
“Those who are helping us protect Ukraine will have the opportunity to renew it with their companies, in conjunction with Ukrainian companies. We are ready to discuss all these things in detail ,” the Ukrainian president added.
In an interview with Fox News, Trump said that in return for aid to Ukraine, he wants priority access to rare earth minerals in a country that has the largest reserves of uranium and titanium in Europe.
In response, Zelensky told The Guardian that it is “not in the US interest” for these minerals to end up in Russian hands and potentially shared with North Korea, China or Iran.
“We are not just talking about security, but also about money. Valuable natural resources in which we can offer our partners opportunities to invest in them that did not exist before… For us, it will create jobs, for American companies, it will create profits,” he added.
Asked about a possible meeting with Trump, Zelensky said that “there is no date yet ,” although the teams of both leaders are working to square their agendas.
These statements come just days before the Munich Security Conference (Germany), which begins this Friday, where Zelensky is expected to meet with the Vice President of the United States, JD Vance , one of the most hostile in the Trump Administration regarding the war in Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine and the expectations surrounding a possible US plan to end it will mark the Munich Security Conference, according to the conference’s chairman, Christoph Heusgen.
“We need to hear from both of them to see if they can come up with a peace plan for Ukraine,” Heusgen said.
Heusgen stressed that any peace plan must include security guarantees, as there is nothing to ensure that the fact that the Russian president accepts an agreement means that he will respect it.
“This is said by someone who participated in the Minsk agreements, which would have been a possibility for peace and which Putin trampled on. The same thing happened with other agreements, think of the Bucharest Memorandum or the Paris Charter,” he added.
“The motto of the conference is peace through dialogue. But as long as Putin does not recognise Zelensky’s government, we believe there is no basis for dialogue ,” Heusgen said.
Heusgen said: “I think that we have rarely reached a Security Conference in such a tense situation if we look at all the conflicts in the world. To find a similar situation we would have to go back to the beginnings of the Security Conference and the Cuban crisis or the construction of the Berlin Wall,” he said.
