Volodymyr Zelensky addresses a joint press conference with Danish Prime Minister Frederiksen after their meeting in Kyiv on Tuesday. Photo: EPA-EFE/SERGEY DOLZHENKO

Ukraine is ready to pursue the return of Russian-annexed Crimea through diplomatic means rather than on the battlefield to avoid the loss of “dozens of thousands” of Ukrainian lives, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with Fox News published on Wednesday.

“I was already mentioning that we are ready to bring Crimea back diplomatically,” Zelensky said, stressing that Ukraine could not afford to spend “dozens of thousands of our people so that they perish for the sake of Crimea coming back”.

Since its annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia is estimated to have established over 200 military facilities on the peninsula.

When asked whether he would accept a peace deal that would see Ukraine ceding territory to Russia, Zelensky reiterated that while Ukraine did not currently have the military strength to push Russian forces out of Crimea and the east of the country, it would not acknowledge Russian control over any Ukrainian land seized since 2014.

“We cannot legally acknowledge any occupied territory of Ukraine as Russian. That is about those territories … occupied by Putin before the full-scale invasion, since 2014,” Zelensky said.

While Kyiv has flatly rejected Putin’s terms for ending the war, which include Ukraine dropping its ambitions to join NATO and handing over four of its regions to Moscow in their entirety, it is increasingly thought that any deal would see the conflict frozen along the current frontlines, leaving some 20% of Ukrainian territory under Russian control.

However, after a report by Reuters on Wednesday suggested that Putin could “broadly agree” to freezing the conflict along existing frontlines during ceasefire discussions with incoming US president Donald Trump, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated that Russia would not accept a freeze and would continue its efforts to “achieve our goals, which are well known to everyone”.