Selenskyj: Will not give up Donbass

ARCHIVE - President Volodymyr Zelensky (archive photo). Photo: Henning Bagger/Ritzau Scanpix Foto/dpa

Keystone

Ukraine will not give up the eastern part of the country occupied and controlled by Russia, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyi. The Donbass cannot and will not be given up, Selensky emphasized in an interview with journalists. "For the Russians, Donbass would be a springboard for a new, future attack," he said shortly before US President Donald Trump's Alaska summit with Russian President Putin, at which talks are to be held on Friday without Kiev's participation on ways to achieve a possible peace in Ukraine.

Keystone-SDA

12.08.2025, 21:25

The Crimean peninsula occupied by Russia in 2014 was "100 percent" a springboard for the attack on southern Ukraine. Moreover, Russia had not deployed its own forces in the separatist-controlled Donbass, but had turned renegades into the Russian army.

Any withdrawal of Ukrainian units from their positions in Donbass would allow Moscow to prepare for a new attack. Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin would then have a clear path to the Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhya and Dnipropetrovsk regions in a few years' time, according to Selenskyj.