During talks in Alaska on August 15, 2025, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin discussed the possibility of withdrawing Russian troops from the occupied territories of Ukraine’s Sumy and Kharkiv regions in exchange for the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, some media reported, citing unnamed sources. Commenting on the news, Alexander Lukashenko told reporters it could not have happened. BelTA published a video of his remarks.
“Then they leaked this to the media — the way we also know how to do. They put out some information about swapping territories, something or other. And that’s when I realized, especially since Trump could not have talked about it. Could he really have talked about trading those territories?! Absolutely not. But it was planted in the American media,” Lukashenko said.
Even before the meeting with Putin in Alaska, Trump said the issue of a land swap would be on the agenda. After the talks, he confirmed it in an interview with Fox News:
“Let’s go back for a moment to the issue of Ukraine and Russia. Most people, looking at the situation from the outside, think like this: … there will be some land swaps, Russia’s territory will end up larger than it was before. And Ukraine desperately wants and needs our security measures that won’t be tied to NATO. If you could look into your crystal ball, is that how it all ends?” Fox News host Sean Hannity asked the U.S. president.
“Well, I think those are the issues we discussed, and the issues on which we mostly agreed,” Donald Trump replied.
Following the Alaska talks, the U.S. leader met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European politicians. There, too, he said he planned to raise the subject of a land swap: “We will also discuss a possible exchange of territories.”
