“If today we don’t have the strength to win back all of our territory, maybe the West will find the strength to put Putin in his place … at the [negotiating] table and diplomatically deal with this war,” he added, while again lamenting that Ukraine would be in a different situation today had the West given Kyiv all it asked for earlier in the war.
On the other hand, Zelenskyy said, Ukraine will never recognize its occupied territories as Russian. “This is not about compromise. This means he [Putin] will get away with everything again. This is impossible.”
Russia currently occupies some 18 percent of Ukrainian territory (111,677 square kilometers), including Crimea and parts of the Donbas area in eastern Ukraine that the Kremlin has occupied since 2014, according to Ukrainian monitoring project DeepState.
Since 2022, Ukraine has liberated 42,000 square kilometers of occupied land, but little since 2023. A summer offensive this year saw Russian troops advance rapidly in the Donetsk region, stage a return to the Kharkiv region, and mount assaults in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally claimed title to four regions in Ukraine (Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Luhansk and Kherson) following sham referendums in 2022, even though Kremlin troops don’t fully control the regions today.
Putin has also warned Kyiv that it must withdraw from all four regions if it wants to start talks to end the war.
