Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the Guardian on February 11 that he plans to offer a direct territorial exchange with Russia during peace negotiations.
Accordingly, Ukraine is preparing to exchange Russian territory that Kiev controlled in the Kursk offensive last year in exchange for Ukrainian land controlled by Russia.
"We will exchange this territory for another territory," Mr. Zelensky said, but stressed that he did not know what territories he would ask for in return.
"I don't know, we'll see. But all our territories are important, there is no priority," he said.
Regarding the proposal put forward by President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mr Medvedev said that Kiev's proposal to exchange Russian territories captured in the Kursk offensive for Ukrainian land controlled by Moscow was "absurd".
Russia has demonstrated that it is possible to achieve “peace through strength,” he added, including with drone and missile strikes on Kiev on February 12.
According to an open-source map of the conflict in Ukraine, Russia controls nearly 20% of Ukraine's territory, or more than 112,000 square kilometers, while Ukraine controls about 450 square kilometers of Kursk Oblast in western Russia.
