Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has recently doubled down on his position that Kyiv will not accept any peace proposal that recognizes Crimea as Russian despite President Donald Trump's threats to walk away from peace processes.

Before the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, Russia seized the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, and Trump says Crimea should "stay with Russia" as part of any peace settlement. But Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he has no power to give up Crimea to the Russians. "There's nothing to talk about here," he said.

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954, when both were part of the USSR, to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the unification of Moscow and Kyiv. In 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the peninsula became part of newly independent Ukraine.