Russia says it will never swap Ukrainian territory for Kyiv-held parts of Kursk region

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Wednesday Russia will never discuss trading the Ukrainian territory it holds for areas in Russia's western Kursk region held by Kyiv.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told the Guardian newspaper that he planned to offer Russia a straight territory exchange to help bring an end to the war, including offering pockets of Kursk that Ukraine holds.

Kyiv staged a lightning incursion over the border last August and seized chunks of Kursk, from which Russian troops are still battling to eject them.

"We will swap one territory for another," Zelenskiy said, adding that he did not know which part of Russian-occupied territory Ukraine would ask for back.

"I don't know, we will see. But all our territories are important, there is no priority," he said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow categorically rejects all offers to trade territory.

"This is impossible," he told reporters at a daily briefing. "Russia has never discussed and will not discuss the exchange of its territory."

President Vladimir Putin told Russians at his marathon annual phone-in in December that their troops would definitely eject Ukrainian forces from Kursk, but declined to say when this would happen.

Peskov said: "Ukrainian units will be expelled from this territory. All who are not destroyed will be expelled."

Russia controls just under 20% of Ukraine, or more than 112,000 square kilometres, while Ukraine controls around 450 square kilometres of the Kursk region, according to open source maps of the battlefield.

Russian forces in 2024 advanced in Ukraine at the fastest rate since 2022, the war's first year, but the gains have come at the cost of heavy, though undisclosed, losses in men and equipment.

(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)