The Japan Times - Russia rejects swapping occupied territory with Ukraine

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who had floated the idea of exchanging occupied land, said the latest strikes showed the Kremlin was not interested in pursuing peace in Ukraine.

Zelensky had suggested exchanging Ukrainian-held chunks of Russia's region of Kursk for Russian-controlled territory in eastern and southern Ukraine in an interview published late Tuesday. The Kremlin dismissed the proposal outright in response.

"This is impossible," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. "Russia has never and will never discuss the topic of exchanging its territory."

Peskov vowed that Ukrainian forces holding territory inside Russia would either be "destroyed" or pushed out.

Ukrainian forces rushed over the Russian border in August last year to wrest control over swathes of territory it hopes will be key to any future deal to end the grinding conflict.

- Combined missile strike -

The Kremlin's refusal to discuss land swaps came shortly after Zelensky announced that one person had been killed and at least four others were wounded -- including a child -- in the attack on Kyiv. It damaged apartment blocks, office buildings, and civilian infrastructure.

AFP journalists heard a volley of explosions ring out over the city and saw the body of one person killed covered in a black plastic sheet on a street littered with debris.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is "not preparing for peace -- he continues to kill Ukrainians and destroy cities," Zelensky wrote on social media after the attack.

"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," he added.

Russia's defence ministry said it had carried out a "group missile strike" on Ukrainian military-industrial sites that produce drones, and claimed all targets had been hit.

Zelensky's comments on Russia's readiness for talks come on the back of weeks of mounting rhetoric from Moscow, Washington, and Kyiv over the possibility of negotiations that could end the nearly three-year Russian invasion.

Zelensky is due to meet US Vice President JD Vance on Friday on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. That gathering will be dominated by the war, which has cost tens of thousands of lives.

- Flurry of meetings -

US President Donald Trump's special envoy Keith Kellogg, who is tasked with drawing up a proposal to halt the fighting, is also due to visit Ukraine next week, after the Zelensky-Vance meeting in Munich.

That trip would come just days before the three-year anniversary of Russia's invasion on February 24.

Trump took office vowing to end the war in Ukraine, possibly by leveraging billions of dollars in US assistance sent under former president Joe Biden, to force Kyiv into territorial concessions.

On Tuesday, Trump welcomed to the White House Marc Fogel, an American jailed in Russia on drug charges since 2021. He was released by Moscow and returned to the United States after US envoy Steve Witkoff secured his release.

The US president said Russia had acted "very nicely" with Fogel's release and he hoped it would be the "beginning of a relationship where we can end that war".

Peskov said the two sides had agreed to release Fogel for a Russian citizen in US detention. The identity of the freed Russian would be revealed once they were back in Russia, he added.

But he poured cold water over the idea that the exchange represented any "turning point" in ties, suggesting instead that the swap could help gradually thaw relations currently at their "lowest point".

- Russia advances on battlefield -

On the ground in Kyiv on Wednesday, emergency services said that some 120 rescue workers had been deployed to three districts of the capital in the aftermath of the attack and that fires sparked by the barrage had been extinguished.

North of Kyiv in the Chernigiv region, governor Vyacheslav Chaus said Russian forces had targeted "critical infrastructure" in the barrage and that two people had been wounded.

The mounting discussions on a possible end to the conflict come at a difficult time for Ukraine on the battlefield. Kyiv's army has been losing ground to better-resourced Russian forces at strategic points along the sprawling front line.

S.Suzuki--JT