Ukraine is planning to indefinitely hold on to Russian territory it seized during a surprise attack last month in a bid to force President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.
"We don't need their land," Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told NBC News on Tuesday. "We don't want to bring our Ukrainian way of life there."
Zelenskyy gave his first one-on-one interview since Ukraine's high-stakes invasion of Russia's Kursk region on Aug. 6 in a secret operation. Kyiv now claims it controls nearly 500 square miles of Russian territory, an area about the size of Phoenix, and has taken hundreds of Russian prisoners of war.
Ukraine will hold the territory as it is integral to his "victory plan" to end the war, Zelenskyy told NBC News, adding he will present the proposal to international partners such as the United States.
"For now, we need it," he said.
Ukraine insists it only wants to take part in peace negotiations from a position of power, which holding Russian territory could help give it. A second peace summit is expected to be held in November – the first was in Switzerland in June – and Zelenskyy told NBC News that representatives from Russia must be present.
"We understand that without the Russian side, ending this war diplomatically is very difficult," he said.
Multiple Russian officials have said peace negotiations were impossible after Ukraine's invasion of Kursk, NBC News reported.
Zelenskyy said he couldn't discuss whether Ukraine planned to try to seize more Russian territory.
"I will not tell, I'm sorry," he said. "With all respect, I can't speak about it. The success is very close to surprise."
Zelenskyy also told NBC News that the Biden administration was not aware of his plans ahead of time because it was a closely guarded secret, even inside Ukraine.
"Yes, we did not inform anyone," he said. "And it's not the question of lack of trust."
Zelenskyy said Ukraine's counteroffensive last summer sputtered in many ways because of how much it was advertised and talked about, which gave the Russians a chance to prepare. This time, even Ukrainian intelligence services did not know, he said.
"I shrunk to the maximum the circle of people who knew about this operation," Zelenskyy said. "I think it was one of the reasons why it was successful."
Even with its recent success, Ukraine continues to lose ground to Russia in its east, where Moscow's forces are inching closer to taking the key logistics hub of Pokrovsk and neighboring Toretsk in the Donetsk region.
On Monday, Putin said his forces in the east have been advancing faster than they have for a long time, according to NBC News. Since its February 2022 invasion, Russia still controls about a fifth of Ukraine's territory, having illegally annexed substantial portions of it. Ukrainian cities and villages get bombarded nearly daily, with the latest strike on the central city of Poltava on Tuesday claiming at least 51 lives.
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