US senior official says decision on territorial concessions is up to Ukraine

It’s up to Ukraine to decide about territorial concessions to Russia in order to end the conflict, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said, Report informs.

"The key thing, from my perspective, is that Ukraine determine its destiny and its destiny, not be imposed by outside powers, including the United States," he said in an interview with the ABC television channel. "As far as territory or security or other elements, I'm not going to speak to that publicly. I think President Zelenskyy should be the one who chooses to speak to that because, ultimately, it’s his country we’re talking about."

According to Sullivan, Kyiv understands that the conflict would be ultimately settled through talks. "Over the course of 2024, we’ve been very engaged with President Zelenskyy and his team on what the shape of that negotiation could look like. And the key thing for this year was to try to give Ukraine as many tools as possible so that they could go into that negotiation and feel they could achieve the outcome that they would like to see," he said.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview with the Sky News television channel on November 29 that he believed that the "hot phase" of conflict could be ended if Kyiv-controlled territories were taken "under the NATO umbrella."