FILE PHOTO: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy addresses lawmakers on the 1000th day of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, during a parliament session in Kyiv, Ukraine November 19, 2024. Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
(Reuters) - Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy acknowledged the Crimea peninsula, seized by Russia in 2014, would have to be restored to Ukrainian sovereignty through diplomacy.
Zelenskiy, interviewed by Fox News on a train in Ukraine and broadcast on Wednesday, said his country could not afford to lose the number of lives that would be required to retake Crimea through military means.
He again rejected any notion of ceding any territory already occupied by Moscow's forces, saying Ukraine "cannot legally acknowledge any occupied territory of Ukraine as Russian."
"I was already mentioning that we are ready to bring Crimea back diplomatically," Zelenskiy told Fox News through an interpreter.
"We cannot spend dozens of thousands of our people so that they perish for the sake of Crimea coming back ... and still it's not a fact that we can bring it back with the arms in our hands. We understand that Crimea can be brought back diplomatically."
Russia seized and annexed Crimea in 2014 after a popular uprising prompted a Russia-friendly president to flee the country and Russian proxies seized swathes of territory in Ukraine's east.
Since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, its troops have captured about one-fifth of Ukraine's territory and proclaimed the annexation of four provinces, though Moscow does not fully control any of them.
Zelenskiy has proposed a peace formula and a "victory plan" underpinned by the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine. But his recent calls have stressed security guarantees for his country and an invitation to join NATO, a notion rejected out of hand by Moscow.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski in Winnipeg; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
