Ukraine will keep the occupied lands of Russia's Kursk Region as part of its plan to win the war. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this in an interview with NBC.
"Kursk Region is a bigger military-political or military-diplomatic step, if you like,‘’ he said.
At the same time, Zelenskyy stressed that we do not need Russian territory.
"Our operation is aimed at restoring our territorial integrity. We do not need their people, their civilians. We take prisoners of war only to exchange them for ours. We do not want to bring our Ukrainian lives there. This operation strengthens our state. But this does not mean that we will exchange one territory for another," the Ukrainian leader said.
When asked about the next steps, Zelenskyy replied that ‘what you saw is part of our plan’.
"Is there a plan to seize more territories. I cannot talk about it. This is just the beginning of our Kursk operation. The success is very close to a surprise," the president said.
Zelenskyy also explained how the idea for the operation came about. "We had an understanding from our intelligence that Russia was planning to create a buffer zone deep into our country. Putin and his entourage spoke openly about this. We realised that they would not stop. With the breakthrough in the Kharkiv Region, we were able to stop them and prevent them from occupying Kharkiv. There were signals that they could do it in the north. Sumy and Chernihiv Regions would have been a serious challenge for us. And they did not abandon these plans. So we had to conduct an operation to create a buffer zone not for them, but for us. So that we would not repel their attacks, as we did in Kharkiv, losing territory and people, but rather do something unexpected," Zelenskyy explained.
‘We had an understanding that if they broke through the border in Sumy Region, which is opposite Kursk Region, we would have to stop them for a very long time, and to oust them, we would need to have an advantage in people and weapons. And it is not a given that we will have it. That's why we made a preemptive strike," he added.
Zelenskyy stressed that everything that is happening in Kursk Region is not improvisation, ‘this is a clear operation, this is part of the operation.’
The President said that the United States was not informed of the information in advance not because it was a matter of distrust. "We did not inform anyone. And this is not a matter of distrust. We did not inform many institutions within our country. And the intelligence did not know, I reduced the circle of people who knew about it as much as possible. This is a war and information leakage is constant. There are a lot of people, a lot of information, and there is a possibility of leakage. We had problems with southern information more than a year ago. Everyone knew about this operation, our partners and the Russians. The Russians knew the details of our operation," Zelenskyy stressed.
Yesterday, Zelenskyy said that ‘all the defined goals of the Kursk operation are being implemented’.