Medvedev calls Zelensky's words about territory exchange nonsense

The deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, Dmitriy Medvedev, has called the proposal by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (his term expired on 20 May 2024) to exchange territories between Russia and Ukraine nonsense. He said this in his Telegram channel on February 12.

He emphasized that the February 12 strikes by the Russian Armed Forces on Kiev were part of the concept of "peace through force."

"Peace through force, you say? Sometimes this concept works indeed. For example, by demonstrating the real, not invented by someone, balance of forces. <...>Although even such actions are not able to completely clear the brains of those illegitimate clowns who, trembling with fear and drug withdrawal, talk nonsense on camera about the exchange of territories," Medvedev wrote.

"The Kiev regime is a Nazi regime because it has launched an offensive against everything Russian."

Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin on the settlement of the Ukrainian conflict, Russian-Armenian relations and cooperation with CIS countries

Earlier in the day, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that a territory swap was impossible. He noted that Russia has never discussed and will not discuss the topic of exchanging its territory.

The day before, on February 11, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, commenting on Zelensky's words, told Izvestia that the Ukrainian president was talking about a possible exchange of territories with Russia to settle the conflict in order to hide the seriousness of the disaster that befell the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) in the Kursk region.

On the same day, Zelensky said in an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian that if US President Donald Trump succeeds in organizing peace talks between Moscow and Kiev, the Ukrainian leader plans to offer Russia to exchange land in Kursk region, which the AFU invaded, for some part of the regions that became part of the Russian Federation, but he himself does not know which one.

The last round of talks took place 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 Russian President Vladimir Putin was put into effect.