Ukraine has slapped down Donald Trump’s special envoy after he suggested Kyiv hands over five territories to Russia.
Steve Witkoff claimed a permanent peace deal with Vladimir Putin – who started the war by invading Ukraine in February 2022 – relies on officially changing the border in Moscow’s favour.
But Ukraine’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Heorhii Tykhyi, told a press briefing on Wednesday that there was no chance Kyiv would agree to such a plan.
He said: “Ukraine is a sovereign country, united within internationally recognised borders.
“This position of Ukraine is immutable and will never change. I can tell you: never.
“No matter how many years, months, it will never change. Ukraine, as it was, will be within internationally recognised borders.”
Putin seized Ukraine’s peninsula of Crimea in 2014 and took Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, Kherson and Donetsk in 2022.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly made it clear he will only accept peace if Russia returns Ukraine’s borders back to those set up in 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Notably, Witkoff – who met Putin on April 11 – did not name the territories he was referring to when he suggested Ukraine give up land to secure peace.
In March, the special envoy triggered backlash by saying: “I think the largest issue in the conflict is those so-called four regions … Donbas, Crimea, Luhansk… and there’s two others.”
Donbas is the collective name of the region encompassing both Luhansk and Donetsk.
Tykhyi also pointed out that Ukraine has three red lines in the peace talks Trump is pushing to resolve; firstly, that Ukraine will never cede its occupied territories, that it will never agree to cap its defence or foreign aid, and that third countries will not have a choice over what unions or alliances Kyiv joins.
He said: “This all is Ukraine’s right under international law, not just a wish list.
“Russia has no right to dictate anything to Ukraine. It’s an aggression, where there’s a state that was attacked and the attacker state.
“There should be no equalising of the two.”
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