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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he did not discuss the possibility that the US would recognize Crimea as Russian territory during his most recent call with US President Donald Trump.
“Mr. President Trump did not raise this issue with me,” Zelenskyy said Thursday when asked by the press about Semafor’s reporting that Washington is mulling the formal recognition of the peninsula as part of Russia as part of an agreement to end the war in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy said that he had emphasized how important Crimea is to Ukrainians to Trump at a meeting last September, adding that the president had seemed interested in “why Ukrainians love it so much.”
Crimea “is a Ukrainian peninsula,” Zelenskyy stressed, adding that it is being suffocated under Russia’s occupation.
Trump has not made a decision over recognizing Crimea as Russian, but the possibility — urging the United Nations to do the same —is under consideration by the White House, two people familiar with the matter told Semafor.
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Last week, Trump said negotiators had discussed “dividing up certain assets,” adding ahead of his call with Russia’s Vladimir Putin Tuesday that the two leaders would likely be “talking about land,” although it remains unclear if that call included any discussion of territorial concessions.
Negotiations over territory is, however, something Zelenskyy said he expected if an initial ceasefire can be achieved. “For us, the red line is the recognition of the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories as Russian,” he said. “We will not accept this.”