Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine could not accept US recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea as he visited South Africa, while both he and Donald Trump criticised a deadly missile and drone attack on Kyiv.
Though he did not mention Crimea – the contested Black Sea peninsula occupied by Russia since spring 2014 – by name, Ukraine’s president diplomatically returned to the topic a day after Trump accused him of intransigence on the issue.
Zelenskyy was speaking alongside his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa, on a trip that he then cut short after the assault on Kyiv that leftat least 12 dead and more than 90 injured. He complained that he did not “see strong pressure on Russia now” to bring the war to an end.
When asked whether he thought the US was becoming impatient with the lack of progress towards a peace agreement, Zelenskyy said the cost of the war continuing was ultimately borne by Ukrainian civilians.
“I’m not sure whose patience is wearing thin, but I think that ultimately patience will wear thin among the Ukrainians, because it’s us that has to suffer those Russian strikes,” Zelenskyy said.
Shortly after, Trump posted a rare public criticism of Moscow for its attack on civilians, in remarks aimed directly at the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. He said: “I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Lets get the Peace Deal DONE!”
Referring to indirectly to Crimea, Zelenskyy said that while Ukraine wanted to cooperate with US and European allies, there were limits. “We do everything that our partners have proposed, only what contradicts our legislation and the constitution we cannot do,” he said during a press conference in Pretoria.
Ukraine considers Crimea an integral part of the country in its constitution. The only way Kyiv could legally recognise a Russian takeover would be to put the issue to the public in a referendum, a point that the country’s leaders have been making in public and private as the issue has come to the fore.
However, leaks from the beginning of the week suggested the US appears willing to recognise Russia’s unilateral annexation of Crimea as part of a peace plan largely negotiated between Washington and Moscow that would end the fighting. No western country has so far recognised the 2014 seizure of Crimea.
On Wednesday night, Trump publicly accused the Ukrainian leader of jeopardising an imminent peace deal by refusing to budge, arguing that “Crimea was lost years ago”. “Nobody is asking Zelenskyy to recognize Crimea as Russian Territory,” Trump wrote, implying that US was willing to do so.
On Thursday, the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Trump’s position “completely corresponds with our understanding and with what we have been saying for a long time” and Moscow was continuing to engage with the US.
Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, said in a separate briefing that Zelenskyy lacked the capacity to negotiate a deal to end the war – and accused him of trying to “torpedo the emerging peace process at any cost”.
Zelenskyy meanwhile tweeted out a “Crimea declaration” released in 2018 under the previous Trump administration by the former secretary of state Mike Pompeo. In it the US said, “no country can change the borders of another by force” – and accused Russia of trying to undermine “a bedrock international principle”.
Ukrainian officials argue that Crimea’s legal status as part of Ukraine has been upheld by UN general assembly resolutions, and accuse Russia of engaging in human rights abuses during its 11-year occupation. Last year the European court of human rights held that Russia was guilty of violations.
Negotiators also argue that allowing an attacker to legally take over territory creates a dangerous precedent for future conflicts, and could embolden authoritarian regimes such as China. Beijing has consistently threatened Taiwan and demanded its reunification with China.
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However, that argument appears to have failed to cut through so far with the White House, which under Trump has asserted its own territorial claims to Greenland, the Panama canal and Canada.
Few in Ukraine believe that Russia, under Putin, would be prepared to halt its demands for territorial recognition at Crimea. Under the emerging peace proposals, Russia would also keep the vast majority of the Ukrainian territory it occupies in the east and the south, though this would not be recognised by the US or others.
A concern among Ukrainian officials is that an imposed peace agreement not considered to be fair or just in the country could escalate tensions and so threaten regional stability. Ignoring legitimate Ukrainian interests may help perpetuate the conflict at a lower level, not dissimilar to the period between 2015 and 2022.
Russia’s focus on consolidating its position in Crimea reflects its strategic significance. Orysia Lutsevych, a Ukraine expert with Chatham House, said greater control would allow Russia to rebuild its position in the northern Black Sea and potentially “threaten Ukrainian grain shipping and ports again”.
Over the course of the war, Ukraine’s successful use of long-range sea drones – helping it destroy or damage an estimated 24 vessels – has forced Russia’s Black Sea fleet to relocate east from Sevastopol in Crimea to Novorossiysk. Ukraine has been able to continue grain exports through a western maritime corridor.
A long ceasefire or peace would also allow Russia to redeploy in Sevastopol and use Crimea to project power further south towards the Mediterranean, Lutsevych said, a point given sharper focus in Moscow after the loss of the Tartus naval base in Syria after the fall of its one-time ally Bashar al-Assad.
“The obsession with Crimea has a military strategic reasoning, although its symbolic importance to Putin also means he wants it as part of his legacy. Ukraine also recognises that his desire for Crimea also makes it an achilles heel for his regime, if it can show he cannot control it.”