KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told NBC News on Tuesday that Kyiv is planning to indefinitely hold Russian territories it seized in a surprise incursion last month as it tries to force President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.
“We don’t need their land. We don’t want to bring our Ukrainian way of life there,” he said during his first one-on-one interview since Ukraine’s high-stakes incursion into Russia.
Ukraine will “hold” the territory as it is integral to his “victory plan” to end the the war, Zelenskyy said, adding he will present the proposal to international partners like the United States.
“For now, we need it,” he said of the territory Ukraine is now holding in Russia.
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Nearly a month ago, Ukrainian troops swept into Russia’s Kursk region in a secret operation that has challenged the status quo of the two-and-a-half-year-old war. Kyiv now claims it controls nearly 500 square miles of Russian territory and has taken hundreds of Russian prisoners of war.
The Aug. 6 incursion was “a pre-emptive strike” to stop the Russians from creating a buffer zone along Ukraine’s border, Zelenskyy said. With Kyiv intensifying its attacks on Russian border regions, Putin has vowed to take Ukrainian border territory to stop the assaults.
Zelenskyy said he couldn’t discuss whether Ukraine planned to try to seize more Russian territory.
“I will not tell, I’m sorry,” he said. “With all respect, I can’t speak about it. I think the success is very close to surprise.”
Zelenskyy also told NBC News that the Biden administration was not aware of plans to cross over into Russia ahead of time as it was a closely guarded secret even inside Ukraine.
Washington has repeatedly said it was not in on Kyiv’s plans for Kursk.
“Yes, we did not inform anyone. And it’s not the question of lack of trust,” Zelenskyy said, adding that Kyiv’s counteroffensive last summer failed in many ways because of how much it was advertised and talked about, which gave Russians a chance to prepare.
This time, even Ukrainian intelligence services did not know, he said.
“I shrunk to the maximum the circle of people who knew about this operation,” Zelenskyy added. “I think it was one of the reasons why it was successful.”
The Kremlin has tried to maintain a semblance of control in the face of the incursion, saying Kyiv’s forces are suffering from unusually heavy losses. So far, though, Russia has failed to push the Ukrainians out of its territory.
Despite what is widely seen as Ukraine’s success in Russia, it continues to lose ground in its east, where the Kremlin’s forces are inching closer to taking the key logistics hub of Pokrovsk and neighboring Toretsk in the Donetsk region.
One of the goals of the incursion, Zelenskyy said, was to force Moscow to pull troops from across the 600-mile front line in Ukraine, in particular in the east. And while he said Russia has diverted 60,000 troops to Kursk from Ukraine, Pokrovsk has not seen a big drop.
NBC News could not verify this number.
On Monday, Putin said his forces in the east have been advancing faster than they have done for a long time.
So now, more than 30 months since his invasion, Moscow still controls about a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, having illegally annexed large portions of it. Ukrainian cities and villages get bombarded nearly daily, with the latest strike on the central city of Poltava on Tuesday claiming at least 51 lives.
With war fatigue growing amid Ukraine’s struggle to recruit enough manpower to sustain the war, talk of peace negotiations has grown.
But Ukraine has insisted it only wants to take part in them from a position of power, which holding Russian territory could help give it. A second peace summit is expected to be held in November — the first was in Switzerland in June — and Zelenskyy told NBC News that representatives from Russia have to be present.
“We understand that without the Russian side, ending this war diplomatically is very difficult,” he said.
Multiple Russian officials have already said peace negotiations were impossible after Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk.
Richard Engel and Gabe Joselow reported from Kyiv, and Yuliya Talmazan from London.
