The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine accused the Financial Times of disinformation: there can be no compromise on the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine.
“The information is not true”
Speaker of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Georgy Tikhy said on October 1 that the information from the Financial Times source about Ukraine’s readiness to make territorial compromises for the sake of peace does not correspond to reality. Previous edition wrotethat Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiga, during a visit to the United States, discussed security guarantees for the country “in exchange for land.”
Tikhy assured that the minister’s position is “unshakable” – there can be no compromises. The OP emphasized that Ukraine does not trade sovereignty and territories, does not participate in any processes that could end in an agreement “land in exchange for security guarantees and NATO membership.”
About this October 5 stated on condition of anonymity, and an official from the Office of the President of Ukraine, commenting on the publication of the Western press that negotiations are allegedly being prepared in the format of “security guarantees for Ukraine in exchange for the occupied territories.” A source in the President’s Office said that this is “nonsense” and noted that there are no such conversations at all:
“No one in the West has officially and explicitly offered Ukraine such security guarantees that would definitely prevent the expansion or repetition of war. They are even afraid to give (permission for) long-range shooting.”
Financial Times on possible negotiations
Earlier, the Financial Times published an article alleging that Ukraine was being offered to take part in the upcoming peace talks, following the position of West Germany in the past. We are talking about powerful security guarantees – such as NATO membership in exchange for Russian control over the occupied territories. Allegedly, we are talking about a “tacit agreement” that the lands seized by the Russians will temporarily (in fact) go to the Russian Federation, but will subsequently be returned diplomatically. At the same time, the FT did not provide any real steps on how this could actually be done.
According to unnamed diplomats cited by the FT, Sibiga used private meetings with Western colleagues during his first visit to the United States to discuss potential compromise solutions. The publication notes that he was more pragmatic about the possibility of holding negotiations on “land in exchange for security” than his predecessor Dmitry Kuleba. Subsequently, the representative of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Georgy Tikhy, said that the information from the source of the Financial Times was not true.
What the President of Ukraine says and Ukrainians think
President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky has repeatedly stated that Ukraine will not make territorial concessions for the sake of peace and is not considering the “ceasefire in exchange for land” formula. At the same time, Vladimir Putin agrees to a ceasefire and peace negotiations only “taking into account new territorial realities,” that is, without de-occupation. Moreover, Putin demands that Ukraine, before the start of negotiations, completely give him the Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, which the Russian Federation now partially controls, and also withdraw from the Kursk region of the Russian Federation.
At the same time, more and more Ukrainians support territorial concessions to Russia in exchange for peace. As the results of the KIIS survey showed in July 2024, already almost a third of Ukrainians believe that the state may consider giving up some of its territories to achieve peace. Most of those in favor of territorial concessions live in the east and south of Ukraine. That is, in regions where active hostilities are taking place.
Neither Kyiv nor its supporters are proposing to recognize Russia's sovereignty over the fifth of Ukrainian territory it has illegally seized since 2014. Acknowledging this fact would encourage further Russian aggression and would seriously undermine the international legal order. Instead there is a tacit agreement that these lands should be returned diplomatically in the future. However, even this is a sensitive issue for Ukrainians, especially when it is presented as the basis for a compromise with Moscow.
What is being discussed more openly is the nature and timing of the security guarantees Ukraine should receive to support a settlement. In Washington, Zelensky repeated his position on accelerated NATO membership. The United States is afraid to take Ukraine under the umbrella of Article 5 of the NATO Treaty until the end of the war. However, some of Ukraine's allies suggest that such an option may still be feasible.
About the opinion of Jens Stoltenberg, who this week left the post of NATO Secretary General, we wrote in the material Stoltenberg: “Germany joined NATO while divided.”
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