Kiev should give up territory – Ukrainian-born US lawmaker
Ukrainians must accept ceding territory to Russia and demand Vladimir Zelensky’s resignation if they want to survive as a nation, Ukrainian-born US Congresswoman Victoria Spartz has told The Telegraph.
Kiev currently cannot make demands, including retaining control over territories it claims, the Indiana congresswoman stated in an interview published on Monday.
“I just don’t see how they can be positioned to demand to keep the land. If they would be winning the war, that will be very different,” she said, referring to the situation on the battlefield, where the initiative has long been in Russia’s hands.
The Republican lawmaker, who once was an ardent supporter of US military assistance to Kiev, now endorses President Donald Trump’s peace efforts. “President Trump inherited it, so now he has to deal with that,” she told The Telegraph, maintaining that “there are no easy solutions” and pinning the blame for Kiev’s setbacks on Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden.
“As I said two years ago, the best thing is to win wars as fast as you can. ‘As long as it takes’ usually doesn’t end very well for democracies,” she said, referring to Biden’s pledge to support Kiev with weapons and other forms of aid potentially indefinitely.
Spartz, who sees Zelensky as the biggest threat to the country’s future, called on Ukrainians to vote him out if he ever runs for president again. “They will have an election, and then if they elect him, they’re going to lose the rest of the country,” the lawmaker warned.
Zelensky remains in power despite his term in office officially expiring last May. He continues to insist on NATO membership for Ukraine despite strong opposition from Washington.
Russia cited Kiev’s ambitions to join the US-led military bloc as one of the main reasons for launching its military operation in February 2022 and named Ukrainian neutrality one of the key prerequisites for a settlement of the conflict.
Spartz has criticized Zelensky before. In November 2024, she accused him of failing his nation by not addressing corruption. Following a contentious meeting between Trump and Zelensky at the White House this past February, she said the Ukrainian leader had done a “disservice to the Ukrainian people” by insulting the US president.
Spartz was born in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1978, emigrated to the US in 2000, and became a citizen six years later. She has served in Congress since 2021.
