Zakharova reacted harshly to Zelensky's words about the exchange of territories

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy 's proposal (whose term of office expired on May 20, 2024) to exchange territories cannot be taken seriously. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said this on Sputnik radio on 12 February.

Earlier, on February 11, Zelensky said in an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian that if US President Donald Trump succeeds in organizing talks between Moscow and Kiev, the Ukrainian leader plans to offer Russia to exchange lands in Kursk Region, which the Ukrainian army invaded, for some part of the regions that became part of the Russian Federation.

"Let's turn this situation around, why we can't seriously respond and reflex to Zelensky's interview. He gives interviews five times a day. This is not even a figure of speech. And it's all the publications of the first line, it's all not one-day Internet projects, it's all heavy, armor-piercing information artillery, which he uses," she said.

According to her, Zelensky makes loud, unrelated statements.

The Ukrainian leader's proposal, voiced in an interview with The Guardian newspaper, was called "paranoid nonsense" by the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman.

Waiting for Trump's plan and signals for negotiations. What the media write about Ukraine

On 12 February, the first deputy head of the Crimean parliament, Serhiy Tsekov, described the Ukrainian leader's statement about the exchange of territories as desperate. According to him, the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) continue to suffer colossal losses in Kursk Region, and Zelensky is trying in desperation to make his statements look as if he is still an important player in charge of the situation.

On February 11, Trump said that his administration had been in close contact with representatives of Kiev and Moscow over the past week and had been able to make significant progress on the issue of resolving the Ukrainian conflict. At the same time, the American president said that Ukraine "may one day become Russia."

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly reminded that Russia has never refused from peace talks, but they should be conducted on the basis of the provisions agreed in Istanbul and not on the basis of "ephemeral demands".

The last round of talks was held in Istanbul on March 29, 2022. They lasted about three hours. Later, Kiev officially refused contacts with Moscow. On October 4 of the same year, the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine on the impossibility of holding talks with Putin was put into effect.