“We don’t need their land. We don’t want to bring our Ukrainian way of life there,” he told NBC News in a translated interview.
The Ukrainian leader said “hold[ing]” the territory is vital to his “victory plan” to end the war, which has stretched more than 2-and-a-half years since Russia invaded Ukraine.
It has been nearly a month since Ukrainian troops launched a surprise attack into the western Kursk region in Russia on Aug. 6. Since then, an estimated 180,000 people have been evacuated from the Kursk region, and Ukraine has captured about 450 square miles of Russian territory, marking the first time the nation’s sovereignty has been violated since World War II.
More than 100 Russian soldiers were captured as prisoners of war, some of whom were later swapped with Russia for Ukrainian prisoners.
Zelensky told NBC News the Aug. 6 mission was a “pre-emptive strike” to prevent Russian forces from establishing a buffer zone along Ukraine’s border. He declined to say whether Ukraine is planning to attempt to take more Russian land.
“I will not tell, I’m sorry,” he said, per NBC.
“With all respect, I can’t speak about it. I think the success is very close to surprise.”
The incursion forced Russia to divert some troops from parts of eastern Ukraine to the Kursk region, according to Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief. He claimed an estimated 30,000 Russian troops were moved to the Kursk area.
Zelensky last week stated he is planning to eventually present a peace plan to President Joe Biden and current White House candidates, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. This plan is four stages, he added, with the first being the incursion into the Kursk region.
Zelensky said he plans to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York this month, during which he plans to meet with Biden and present the plan. He will also share with Harris and Trump, given the uncertainty of who will win the 2024 election, he added.
Part of his proposals include holding onto the seized Russian land, he told NBC and stated, “For now, we need it.”
The Ukrainian president revealed the Biden administration was not informed of Kyiv’s plans to cross into Russia, noting it was not a “question of lack of trust”, but rather to prevent the Russians from having time to prepare.
“I shrunk to the maximum the circle of people who knew about this operation,” Zelensky continued, adding, “I think it was one of the reasons why it was successful.”
While Kyiv has made progress in the Kursk region, Russian attacks have continued.
The Russian armed forces have eliminated more than 9,300 Ukrainian servicepeople and 80 tanks during military operations in the border areas of the Kursk Region, the defense ministry announced on Tuesday.
On Monday, President Vladimir Putin stated Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region has failed to achieve its intended goal of halting the advance of Moscow in Donbass.
He added that Russia has been making great strides in key areas of Donbass, advancing at a pace that has not been seen in a “long time”.
The president stressed that Kiev’s provocation in Kursk Region would inevitably fail and that Moscow would “deal with the Ukrainian bandits” who have entered Russian territory with the aim of destabilizing the situation at the border.
After that, Putin suggested, Kiev may come to realize that it needs to resolve the conflict through negotiations, and reiterated that Moscow has never refused to hold such talks.
However, the president noted that the Ukrainian leadership was likely not interested in ending the fighting, given that it would have to hold new presidential elections as soon as martial law in the country was lifted.
