MOSCOW – The Kremlin firmly dismissed any possibility of exchanging occupied Ukrainian land for areas in Russia’s western Kursk region held by Kyiv, following a proposal by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
In an interview with The Guardian, Zelensky suggested a direct territorial exchange as a potential step toward ending the war, including offering portions of Kursk that Ukrainian forces captured in a surprise cross-border raid last August. Russian troops have since been engaged in efforts to reclaim those areas.
“We will swap one territory for another,” Zelensky stated, though he did not specify which Russian-occupied regions Ukraine would seek to regain. “All our territories are important; there is no priority,” he added. However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov categorically rejected the proposal.
“This is impossible,” Peskov told reporters. “Russia has never discussed and will never discuss the exchange of its territory.”
President Vladimir Putin had previously assured Russians during his annual December phone-in that Ukrainian forces would be expelled from Kursk, though he refrained from providing a timeline. Peskov reiterated this stance, stating, “Ukrainian units will be expelled from this territory. Those who are not destroyed will be removed.”
Currently, Russia controls nearly 20% of Ukraine—over 112,000 square kilometers—while Ukrainian forces hold approximately 450 square kilometers of Russia’s Kursk region, based on open-source battlefield data.
Despite Russia’s recent military advances, which have been the fastest since the early months of the 2022 invasion, the gains have come at a significant but undisclosed cost in personnel and equipment.