Russia on Wednesday rejected swapping occupied territory with Kyiv as part of any future peace deal hours after launching a barrage of drones and missiles on Kyiv that killed one person.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who had floated the idea of exchanging occupied land, said the latest strikes showed the Kremlin was not interested in pursuing peace in Ukraine.

Zelensky had suggested exchanging Ukrainian-held chunks of Russia's region of Kursk for Russian-controlled territory in eastern and southern Ukraine in an interview published late Tuesday. The Kremlin dismissed the proposal outright in response.

"This is impossible," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. "Russia has never and will never discuss the topic of exchanging its territory."

Peskov vowed that Ukrainian forces holding territory inside Russia would either be "destroyed" or pushed out.

Ukrainian forces rushed over the Russian border in August last year to wrest control over swathes of territory it hopes will be key to any future deal to end the grinding conflict.

The Kremlin's refusal to........

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