Changes to Ukraine borders 'can be decided only by the people'

As US President Donald Trump meets Russian president Vladimir Putin today, Samya Kullab, of Associated Press, assesses how land swaps with Russia are not only unpopular in Ukraine, they're also illegal

- Samya Kullab

A PEACE deal that requires Kyiv to accept swapping Ukrainian territory with Russia would not only be deeply unpopular, it would also be illegal under its constitution.

That's why President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has categorically rejected any deal with Moscow that could involve ceding land, after US President Donald Trump suggested such a concession would be beneficial to both sides, ahead of Trump's meeting today with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska.

Zelenskyy said over the weekend that Kyiv “will not give Russia any awards for what it has done,” and that “Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier.”

The remarks came after Trump said a peace deal would involve swapping of Ukrainian territories by both sides “to the betterment of both”.

For Zelenskyy, such a deal would be disaster for his presidency and spark public outcry after more than three years of bloodshed and sacrifice by Ukrainians. Moreover, he doesn’t have the authority to sign off on it, because changing Ukraine's 1991 borders runs counter to the country’s constitution.

For now, freezing the front line appears to be an outcome the Ukrainian people are willing to accept.

A look at the challenges such proposals entail:

Russia occupies about a fifth of Ukraine, from the country’s northeast to the Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed illegally in 2014.

The front line is vast and cuts across six regions - the active front stretches for at least 1,000km (680 miles) - but if measured from along the border with Russia, it reaches as far as 2,300km (1,430 miles).

Russia controls almost all of the Luhansk region and almost two-thirds of Donetsk region, which together comprise the Donbas, as the strategic industrial heartland of Ukraine is called. Russia has long coveted the area and illegally annexed it in the first year of the full-scale invasion, even though it didn’t control much of it at the time.