Moscow — Russia on Wednesday rejected swapping occupied territory with Kyiv in any peace deal, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy floated the idea. “This is impossible. Russia has never and will never discuss the topic of exchanging its territory,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, ruling out Zelenskyy’s idea of a swap involving Ukrainian-held parts of Russia’s western Kursk region. Peskov spoke not long after Russia hit Ukraine’s capital Kyiv with a deadly drone and missile attack that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called proof the Kremlin is not interested in pursuing peace. Journalists with the French news agency AFP heard a volley of explosions ring out over Kyiv early Wednesday and then saw the body of one person killed covered with a black plastic sheet on a street littered with debris.
Russia’s defense ministry said it had carried out a “group missile strike” on Ukrainian military-industrial sites that produce drones, claiming in a social media post that, “all planned targets were hit.” Zelenskyy said one person was killed and at least four others were wounded — including a child — in the attack that he said had damaged apartment blocks, office buildings, and civilian infrastructure. Russian President Vladimir Putin is “not preparing for peace — he continues to kill Ukrainians and destroy cities,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media after the strike. “Only strong steps and pressure on Russia can stop this terror. Right now we need the unity and the support of all our partners in the fight for a just end to this war.”
Zelenskyy’s comments come amid increasing rhetoric from Moscow, Washington, and Kyiv over the possibility of negotiations that could end the nearly three-year Russian invasion. Zelenskyy is due to meet U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Friday on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, which will be dominated by the war that has cost tens of thousands of lives. President Trump’s special envoy for Russia and Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, who is tasked with drawing up a proposal to halt the fighting, is also due to visit Ukraine next week, after the Zelenskyy-Vance meeting in Germany. That trip would come just days before the three-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, on February 24. Mr. Trump took office vowing to end the war in Ukraine, possibly by leveraging billions of dollars in U.S. assistance sent under former president Joe Biden, to force Kyiv into territorial concessions.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump welcomed to the White House Marc Fogel, an American who had been jailed in Russia since 2021 on drug charges, but who was released by Moscow and returned to the U.S. Mr. Trump said his envoy to Russian and Ukraine, Steve Witkoff, whom he’s tasked with ending the war, secured Fogel’s release. The president said another American would be released Thursday, but he didn’t provide any information on who that would be, or what Russia had been granted in return for the Americans’ release. Mr. Trump said Russia had acted “very nicely” regarding Fogel’s release and that he hoped it would be the “beginning of a relationship where we can end that war.” Emergency services in Kyiv said some 120 rescue workers had been deployed to three districts of the capital in the aftermath of the Wednesday morning attack, and that fires sparked by the barrage had been extinguished.
North of Kyiv in the Chernihiv region, governor Vyacheslav Chaus said Russian forces had targeted “critical infrastructure” in the barrage and that two people were wounded there. The Ukrainian air force said it had shot down six missiles and 71 out of 123 drones, including Iranian-designed Shahed attack vehicles. The mounting discussions on a possible end to the conflict come at a difficult time for Ukraine on the battlefield, where Kyiv’s army has been losing ground to better-resourced Russian forces at strategic points along the sprawling front line.
