Washington (AFP) – Ukrainian President Volodyr Zelensky said he was ready to swap land in negotiations with Russia, which freed at least one American prisoner in what US President Donald Trump described Tuesday as a goodwill gesture on ending the war. Zelensky has in the past refused to cede any territory after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But in an interview with The Guardian published Tuesday, he said Kyiv was ready for serious talks ahead of a Friday meeting at the Munich Security Conference with US Vice President JD Vance — a vocal critic of US military support to Ukraine.
“We will swap one territory for another,” Zelensky said, adding that he was ready to trade land in Russia’s Kursk region — which Ukraine seized in a surprise offensive last year. He acknowledged that Ukraine would not be able to enjoy security guarantees just with European partners. “Security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees,” he said.
Trump took office vowing to end the war in Ukraine, possibly by leveraging billions of dollars in US assistance sent under former president Joe Biden, to force Kyiv into territorial concessions. In the first known visit by a member of the Trump administration to Russia since he returned to the White House last month, envoy Steve Witkoff secured the release of Marc Fogel, an American jailed since 2021 on drug charges. “We were treated very nicely by Russia,” Trump told reporters of Fogel’s release. “Actually, I hope that’s the beginning of a relationship where we can end that war.”
Trump greeted Fogel at the White House Tuesday night after he landed back in the United States, recounting a meeting with Fogel’s 95-year-old mother at a campaign rally where he promised her to “get him out.” The White House described his release as part of an “exchange,” with Trump saying Tuesday night that a second detainee would be released Wednesday without offering further details. There was no immediate comment from Russia, where state-run news agencies quoted the White House announcement. Russia’s Supreme Court in December refused to consider an appeal Fogel made against his 14-year sentence. Witkoff, a property developer and friend of Trump, is officially the Middle East envoy and earlier played a key role in pushing forward a fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
Earlier in the week, Trump had floated the possibility that Ukraine “may be Russian someday,” words quickly welcomed by Moscow. “The fact that a significant part of Ukraine wants to become Russia, and has already, is a fact,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, referring to Moscow’s 2022 annexation of four Ukrainian regions after referendums widely criticized internationally as fraudulent. Ukrainians reacted with scorn to Trump’s remarks. “It is some kind of senile insanity,” Kyiv resident Daniil told AFP. A Ukrainian soldier on a street in central Kyiv, who only gave the name Mykola, said of Trump: “He can think anything and say anything, but Ukraine will never be Russia.”
Trump in the past has voiced admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and notoriously backed his denial of the US intelligence community’s finding of Russian interference in the Republican’s 2016 election victory. But he has also called on Russia to compromise in recent weeks, saying that Putin needs to cut heavy losses. Both armies are trying to secure an advantage on the battlefield ahead of possible talks. Russia’s defense ministry said Tuesday its troops had captured the small village of Yasenove in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. And a Russian missile strike on Kyiv killed at least one person Wednesday, the city’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram. In Ukraine’s northern Sumy region, regional prosecutors said Russian bombing killed a 40-year-old man and a 30-year-old woman.
Biden shut off most contact with Moscow after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. But intelligence chiefs and others still met quietly in third countries and negotiated swaps that freed the most prominent Americans jailed by Russia — basketball player Britney Griner, journalist Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan. Fogel, 63, was teaching at the Anglo-American School in Moscow when he was arrested in August 2021 over 21 grams of cannabis and cannabis oil allegedly found with him at the Moscow airport. Fogel had been living in Russia since 2012. He was reported to have been teaching English to Russians at his penal colony.
© 2024 AFP
