European Allies Back Ukraine’s Borders After Trump Floats Russia Land Swap
Christopher Miller, Fabrice Deprez Financial Times
President of Volodymyr Zelensky attends the parliament session in Kyiv, Ukraine, July 17, 2025. (photo: AP)
ALSO SEE: Zelenskyy Welcomes European Leaders’ Insistence on Ukraine Role at Peace Talks
Zelenskyy shores up international support ahead of meeting between US president and Vladimir Putin next week
In a joint statement, leaders from the European Commission, France, Italy, the UK, Poland and Finland said “the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations”.
They said “the path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine”, ahead of a meeting next week between the US president and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Zelenskyy has been working to shore up European opposition to any loss of Ukrainian land to Russia after Trump floated the idea of territorial concessions as part of a peace deal.
People close to the Ukrainian president told the Financial Times that he was alarmed by Trump’s decision to hold a face-to-face meeting with Putin in Alaska next week without inviting Ukraine to participate.
The prospect of Trump and Putin discussing the war behind closed doors, without Ukrainian representation, has raised deep concerns in Kyiv that the future of Ukraine could be negotiated over its head.
On Saturday, Zelenskyy rallied European leaders to oppose any deal that could compromise Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
His efforts came as officials from the US, Europe and Ukraine, including US vice-president JD Vance, held talks in the UK at a meeting hosted by British foreign secretary David Lammy.
Late on Saturday, the European leaders released a joint statement calling for “robust and credible security guarantees that enable Ukraine to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity”. It added that “we remain committed to the principle that international borders must not be changed by force”.
Zelenskyy and his advisers are trying to persuade Trump and his team to adopt what one official called a more “rational” approach to Putin’s maximalist demands.
There is anxiety that Trump could seek a quick resolution to the war by offering Putin territorial concessions, legitimising its illegal annexation of Crimea and occupation of huge parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
On Saturday Ukrainian officials were adamant that the US president did not have the legal or political power to order Ukraine to hand over land.
Even if Trump wanted to cut a deal, “nobody here in Ukraine has a legal way to give up territories”, the official added.
In an address to the nation on Saturday, Zelenskyy rejected Trump’s suggestion that a peace deal with Russia could involve “some swapping of territories”, insisting that Ukrainians “will not gift their land to the occupier”.
Trump announced on Friday that he would meet Putin in Alaska on August 15, adding that a peace deal would probably involve Kyiv ceding territory.
“It’s very complicated. We’re going to get some back, we’re going to get some switched. There will be some swapping of territories, to the betterment of both,” Trump said.
European capitals sought on Saturday to clarify “how determined” the US administration is in sealing a deal with Putin and whether it is conscious of the implications of any territorial concessions to Russia, one European government official told the FT.
Conflicting scenarios have been set out by different parts of the Trump administration, with differences between what secretary of state Marco Rubio, US special Envoy Steve Witkoff and even Trump himself had conveyed, the person said.
A US official said: “Today’s hours-long meetings produced significant progress toward President Trump’s goal of bringing an end to the war in Ukraine, ahead of President Trump and President Putin’s upcoming meeting in Alaska.”
Senior Ukrainian officials told the FT that the Russian proposal included a freezing of the frontline in south-eastern Ukraine if Kyiv agreed to pull back from parts of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions that it still controlled.
Moscow has previously laid claim to the entire Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions despite the two regional capitals remaining under Ukrainian control.
Swaths of land controlled by Russian forces in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions as well as small areas in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions may be up for discussion, the officials said.
