The Russian Foreign Ministry rejected the idea of territorial swaps at peace talks on Ukraine

Russia has made it clear that it does not agree to withdraw troops from the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in exchange for transferring the Donbas, as some media outlets have reported.

This was stated at a briefing by Alexey Fadeev, Deputy Director of the Information and Press Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

“There is probably no need to invent anything here. The territorial structure of the Russian Federation is enshrined in our country’s constitution. That says it all. The goals of the Russian delegation in the negotiations in Alaska are dictated solely by national interests,” Fadeev said in response to a question about the possibility of exchanging territories.

According to the most widespread version reported in the press, Russia, in exchange for the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, was allegedly ready to withdraw troops from the Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kharkiv regions—which are not included in the Russian constitution—while freezing the current front line in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. However, this version has not been officially confirmed, and media also report that Russia will not return the occupied territories of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to Ukraine in exchange for the Donbas.