The president of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, said Tuesday in an interview published by the British newspaper The Guardian that will propose to Putin an “exchange” of territories with Russia in the event that his counterpart in the US, Donald Trump, manages Invasion of the Ukrainian territory.
“We will exchange one territory for another,” says the Ukrainian president, who proposes to give up the lands he has maintained under his control for six months in the Russian region of Kursk, after the Ukrainian troops launched a surprise offensive in the area, although He adds that he does not know what part of the territory occupied by Russia I would ask in return. “I don’t know, we’ll see. All our territories are important, there is no priority,” Zelenski told the British newspaper.
In other issues, Zelenski has recognized that if Trump withdraws US support to kyiv, Europe will not be able to fill that void alone. “There are voices that say that Europe could offer security guarantees without the Americans, I always say no. Safety guarantees without the US are not real security guarantees,” he says. That is why the Ukrainian head of state has been willing to negotiate, as long as his country is in a “position of force” to prevent an agreement negotiated by Washington to imply that he has to capitulate before Putin’s demands.
Thus, he has indicated that he would offer US companies “lucrative” reconstruction and investment concessions to try to convince the White House tenant. In fact, one of the proposed ideas is to allow access to the United States to the so -called ‘rare earth’ of Ukraine, a group formed by a fortnight of metals that are used in the automotive industry, telephony and other electronic devices. Zelenski says that this plan was introduced to Trump in September, when they met in New York, although he intends to present “a more detailed plan.”
Ukraine has the largest reserves of Uranium and Titanium in Europe, says the president, convinced that “the interest of the United States is not” in which these reserves end up in the hands of Russia or that they can share them with North Korea, China or Iran. But, as he has considered, it is not only a security incentive, but an economic one. In this sense, he stressed that they are “valuable” natural resources that can offer “possibilities” to the partners who did not invested in them before. “For us it will create jobs, for US companies,” he adds.
On the other hand, he considers that it is “too soon” to judge the administration of Joe Biden while the relations between Washington and kyiv are cooling. When asked if he believes that Donald Trump’s predecessor in the White House will go down in history as the man who helped save Ukraine or who responded slowly to Putin’s challenge, Zelenski has said, among laughs, which is ” Very difficult “say it now.
While. He has criticized Joe Biden’s initial lack of will to provide weapons to Ukraine, considering that “that lack of trust gave Russia,” although he is grateful for all the help given since then. “History shows that there are many things that simply do not know, or what happens between bambalines, nor what negotiations there was … it is difficult to qualify everything today because we do not know everything. We will know later, we will know everything,” has Added.
On the eve, Trump left the door open to the possibility that Ukraine “can be Russian one day.” After that, the Kremlin claimed that “a significant part of Ukraine wants to be part of Russia” and, in fact, “it is already”, by assuming as Russians the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporiyia and Jersón.
