Kiev, 16 April 2025 (dpa/MIA) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned US negotiators in talks with Russia against making inadmissible concessions on the occupied territories of Ukraine.

"All territories belong to the unitary state of Ukraine," Zelensky told a press conference with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the port city of Odessa on the Black Sea on Tuesday.

Only the Ukrainian people would decide on their national territory, Zelensky said.

"And you know that this is a red line for us - not to recognize any temporarily occupied territories as Ukrainian, but as Russian," Zelensky added, as reported by local media.

He also charged that US representatives were talking about things beyond their competence.

This was probably mainly in reference to Steve Witkoff, US President Donald Trump's special envoy.

Witkoff spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg last week. After that, he said that a peace agreement would also address the "so-called five territories."

After annexing the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014, Russia also declared the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhya part of its territory in 2022. Except for Crimea, Russia does not fully control any of the areas.

Moscow's foreign intelligence chief, Sergei Naryshkin, recently said that Kiev must renounce these territories.

The Ukrainian leadership is no longer talking about the possibility of a military reconquest of the occupied territories, as it did at the beginning of the war. However, a permanent legal renunciation is not up for debate in Kiev.

Photo: dpa