U.S. State Secretary Marco Rubio said earlier of the Jeddah negotiations that “there was talk about territorial concessions,” but did not go into detail. Before the Tuesday meeting with Ukraine, Rubio had said Kyiv would need to cede territory to achieve peace because it doesn’t have the means to push Russian troops back to the country’s borders as they existed in 2014, when irregular Moscow forces first invaded.
For Kyiv, which had previously demanded clear security guarantees and even NATO membership in return for a peace deal, agreeing a ceasefire without those conditions amounted to a painful but necessary compromise.
“It is very difficult for us to fight against such an enemy, that is clear,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during a press conference in Kyiv on Wednesday.
“Today we are fighting for our independence. Therefore, we will not recognize any occupied territories as the Russian Federation. This is a fact. Our people fought for this. Our heroes died, many were wounded. Therefore, no one will forget about this. And when I say that no one will forget about this, this is the most important red line,” he said.
Russia has maintained since last summer that if Kyiv wants a ceasefire, it must withdraw from the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Moscow has illegally annexed those territories but does not yet fully control them.
