According to President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, Ukrainians would reject the peace agreement in a referendumaccording to which they would have to unilaterally withdraw from the Donbas region and hand it over to Russia. However, he thinks that if the deal included a freeze on the current front line, they would accept it. Zelensky said this on Tuesday in a telephone interview for the Axios portal, writes TASR.
The issue of territory is a key point of contention in the negotiations between Ukraine and Russiawhich is mediated by the United States. Above all, Moscow claims the entire Donbasalthough it currently occupies approximately 90 percent of its territory. Kyiv strongly rejects this request. Russia says it will take the rest of the region by force if peace talks fail.
According to Zelensky, he ordered the Ukrainian negotiators to propose a meeting at the level of the presidents during the talks with the Russians and the Americans in Geneva. According to him, a meeting with Vladimir Putin is the best way to achieve a breakthrough in the territory issue.
The US wants Ukrainian forces to withdraw from the part of Donbas they still control. and thereby enabled the creation of a demilitarized “free economic zone” between Ukrainian and Russian troops in eastern Ukraine. But Washington did not take a position on who would have sovereignty over this area.
In an interview, President Zelenskyi said that Ukraine and the United States have agreed that any agreement must be voted on by the people of his country. He is convinced that if she counted on the unilateral withdrawal of the Ukrainian army from the Donbass, she would be rejected. According to Axios, with such an agreement, Kyiv would sacrifice its sovereignty and the citizenship of the people who live there.
“People would never forgive this. Never. They won’t forgive…me, they won’t forgive the United States,” said the Ukrainian president, saying that his compatriots do not understand why they should give up another territory when it is part of their homeland. However, according to him, they are looking at the possibility of stopping the fighting along the current front line in the Donbass, which consists of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, as well as in the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. “I believe that if we write in the document… that we will stay where the contact line passes, then people will support it in a referendum. That’s my opinion,” he said.
At the same time, Zelenskyi declared that it is unfair that US President Donald Trump continues to publicly call on Ukraine, and not Russia, to make concessions in order to achieve peace. The US president has expressed himself in this vein at least twice in recent days, but according to Zelensky, his negotiators are not exerting such pressure. “I hope it’s just his tactics and not the final decision,” he stated and at the same time added that “giving victory” to Putin will not lead to the establishment of permanent peace in Ukraine.
