A string of Ukrainian politicians and public figures have vehemently condemned the idea of handing over unoccupied land to Russia for peace.
This development comes after US President Donald Trump reportedly told European leaders that he believed a peace deal could be negotiated if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreed to give up areas of the Donbas region that Russian invaders have not been able to seize in over three years of fighting.
Halyna Yanchenko, an independent member of Ukraine’s parliament, described the suggestion that Ukraine should “simply surrender new territories without a fight – just because Putin wants it – is absurd from the very start”.
She emphasized that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians would be affected by Putin’s proposal, initially favoured by Trump after their Alaska summit.
According to official estimates, 255,000 people still live in the 3,500 sq miles of Donetsk province that Russia has been unable to seize, including the industrial cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
Yanchenko further explained that “when someone brings up the idea of ‘trading territory’, we must understand that in practice it is trading people”.
Serhii Kupavykh, a native of Kramatorsk now living in Kharkiv, believed that allowing Russia to take his city and the rest of Donetsk would amount to “a defeat in the war, which will lead to a split in society”.
Kupavykh added that Zelenskyy had “no right to resolve such issues unilaterally” and that “renouncing the territory is political suicide for the entire government”.
Oleksiy Goncharenko, an MP with the opposition European Solidarity party, stated, “we do not deserve to surrender and we are not in a position to surrender”. He described the part of Donetsk in question as “a fortress” that Putin has tried and failed to take for 11 years, suggesting that Putin now wants to take it through “diplomatic tricks and manoeuvres”.
Goncharenko also noted that Putin’s offer to freeze the conflict in western Kherson and central Zaporizhzhia provinces if Ukraine hands over Donetsk was designed to provoke splits in Ukraine and abroad.
Sevgil Musaieva, the editor of Ukrainian Pravda, warned that Ukrainians were being “forced to behave as if we have to admit defeat. Not military, but political. Not a surrender of arms, but a surrender of thought”.
She emphasized that this would be “the most dangerous form of defeat” and that Ukrainians have “no right to forget Bucha, Izium, Mariupol. We have no right to forget the torture, the mass graves, the children killed and abducted by Russia”.
Oleksii Kovzhun, a popular Kyiv-based video blogger, said Putin’s demands were “akin to capitulation” and that “Zelenskyy could not legally hand over Donetsk even if he would want to” because it would have to be subject to a referendum. “Ukrainians will not allow it,” he asserted.