Ukraine will not legally recognize any territories temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation — Zelenskyy

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy made this statement while laying flowers near a house destroyed by a Russian strike in the Svyatoshynskyi district of Kyiv.

I would not like to comment in great detail on the statement of the US President right now. Our position is unchanged — only the Ukrainian people have the right to decide which territories are Ukrainian. And the Constitution of Ukraine says that all temporarily occupied territories are temporarily occupied, they all belong to Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. Ukraine will not legally recognize any temporarily occupied territories.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy

President of Ukraine

According to him, this is an absolutely fair position, it is legal from the point of view of the Constitution and international law.

And most of the world supports us in this. Even those countries that constantly balance between us and Russia, even they recognize the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine, including the Crimean peninsula.

He added that the Ukrainian team expressed its positions in London together with European colleagues.

It seems to me that now everything is considered and clear there, our position on NATO. Unfortunately, it does not depend on us yet, but depends on allied support. If there is support from all NATO members, then we can proceed to the step with which the partners agree or disagree.

According to the president, today "we must be pragmatic and understand that there are security guarantees that Ukraine needs."

He said that there are issues that were discussed in London regarding security guarantees from the US. And Ukraine really wants them to be very strong, at least like between the US and Israel.

Just as we expect a contingent from our European colleagues. Even where there are European troops, we talk about the US backstop. For us, backstop is not necessarily "boots on the ground" in Ukraine. I know that the US does not look at this very positively, so we talk about intelligence work, we talk about cyber defense, about Patriot air defense systems, and for us this is very important.

As a reminder, today US President Donald Trump announced that Crimea will be recognized as Russian as part of a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine. According to him, President Volodymyr Zelensky understands this.