No return of Crimea and no NATO for Ukraine – Trump
It is “impossible” for Crimea to return to Ukraine or for the country to join NATO, US President Donald Trump told Fox & Friends on Tuesday.
He added that Kiev had approached the US-led military bloc to seek help in trying to get the peninsula back.
“They went in and said ‘We want to get Crimea back’. This was at the beginning,” Trump revealed. “The other thing they said was ‘We want to be a member of NATO’. Well, both of those things are impossible.”
“It was always a no-no,” both during the time of the Soviet Union, and now with Russia, Trump explained, adding that Russia has always stressed it did not want “the enemy” on its border.
The peninsula, which is populated predominantly by ethnic Russians, overwhelmingly voted to join the Russian Federation shortly after the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev, which brought a nationalist Ukrainian government to power.
Moscow has cited the abuse of Russian-speaking Ukrainians by the Kiev regime and its ambition to join NATO, as some of the fundamental reasons for the current conflict.
While Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of “land swaps” in his diplomatic push to end the hostilities in Ukraine, he has firmly stated that Kiev will not get Crimea back.
Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky had previously refused outright to discuss any territorial concessions, stating that “the Constitution of Ukraine does not allow the surrender of territories or the trading of land.” He, however, acknowledged that the land swaps were on the latest talks agenda at the White House.
The Washington meeting came two days after Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, where the two leaders discussed resolving the Ukraine conflict.
Moscow has long insisted that it will only accept a peace deal that eliminates the core causes of the conflict. Namely that Ukraine should renounce its ambitions for NATO membership, demilitarize, and recognize the current territorial realities, including the status of Crimea, as well as of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, the latter four of which voted to join Russia in 2022.
