Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said that Ukraine should not cede all territory occupied by Russia in a peace deal proposed by President Donald Trump.
Uran Express News Online reports that the US president is mounting pressure on Moscow and Kyiv to end fighting.
“Ukraine has, of course, known for some time that a sustainable, credible ceasefire or peace agreement may involve territorial concessions,” Boris Pistorius said in an interview with the broadcaster ARD.
“But these will certainly not go … as far as they do in the latest proposal from the US president,” Pistorius said.
“Ukraine on its own could have got a year ago what was included in that [Trump] proposal; it is akin to a capitulation. I cannot discern any added value.”
Meanwhile, President Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Ukraine’s army was still fighting in Russia’s Kursk despite Moscow claiming the “liberation” of its western region.
Ukraine had hoped it could use the Kursk region as a bargaining chip in future peace talks with Russia.
“Our military continues to perform tasks in the Kursk and Belgorod regions – we are maintaining our presence on Russian territory,” he said in his evening address Sunday.
In a statement earlier Sunday, he conceded that the situation remained difficult in many areas, including Kursk.
