The US president has stated that Russia acquired the peninsula without “firing a single shot.”
Speaking to Fox & Friends on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump declared it “impossible” for Crimea to be returned to Ukraine or for Ukraine to become a member of NATO.
He further noted that Kyiv had approached the US-led military alliance for assistance in reclaiming the peninsula.
“They went in and said ‘We want to get Crimea back’. This was at the beginning,” Trump disclosed. “The other thing they said was ‘We want to be a member of NATO’. Well, both of those things are impossible.”
“It was always a no-no,” Trump explained, referring to both the Soviet era and present-day Russia, adding that Russia has always emphasized its desire not to have “the enemy” on its border.
The peninsula, largely inhabited by ethnic Russians, voted decisively to integrate into the Russian Federation soon after the 2014 Western-supported change of government in Kyiv, which installed a nationalist Ukrainian administration.
Moscow has attributed the current conflict, in part, to the mistreatment of Russian-speaking Ukrainians by the Kyiv government and Ukraine’s aspiration to join NATO.
Although Trump has frequently proposed “land swaps” as part of his diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, he has steadfastly asserted that Kyiv will not regain Crimea.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky had previously outright rejected discussions of any territorial concessions, affirming that “the Constitution of Ukraine does not allow the surrender of territories or the trading of land.” Nonetheless, he did confirm that land swaps were part of the recent White House discussions.
The meeting in Washington occurred two days after Trump’s encounter with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, where the two leaders conferred on resolving the Ukraine conflict.
Moscow has consistently maintained that it will only agree to a peace agreement that addresses the root causes of the conflict. This includes Ukraine abandoning its aspirations for NATO membership, undergoing demilitarization, and acknowledging the existing territorial situation, encompassing the status of Crimea, along with the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions, the latter four having voted to join Russia in 2022.