LONDON: Ukraine will offer to swap territory with Russia in any potential peace negotiations, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview published on Tuesday, adding that Europe alone would not be able to shoulder Kyiv’s war effort.

Zelensky will meet US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday at the Munich Security Conference, the Ukrainian leader’s spokesman said, as Washington pushes for an end to the nearly three-year war with Russia.

Vance has been a frequent critic of US support that has been vital to Ukraine’s war effort.

“There are voices which say that Europe could offer security guarantees without the Americans, and I always say no,” Zelensky told the Guardian newspaper in an interview published on the newspaper’s website on Tuesday.

“Security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees,” he said.

Trump is keen for both sides to reach a deal, the terms of which are a source of concern in Ukraine.

Zelensky told the Guardian he would offer Russian President Vladimir Putin territory that Ukraine seized in Russia’s Kursk region six months ago.

“We will swap one territory for another,” he said, adding that he did not know which territories he would ask for in return.

“I don’t know, we will see. But all our territories are important, there is no priority,” he said.

Russia says it has annexed five regions of Ukraine _ Crimea in 2014 and then Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia in 2022 _ though it does not have full control over them.

Trump confirmed on Monday that he would soon dispatch his special envoy Keith Kellogg, who is tasked with drawing up a proposal to halt the fighting, to Ukraine.

The US president is pressing for a swift end to the conflict, while Zelensky is calling for tough security guarantees from Washington as part of any deal.

Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2025