Ukrainians confront prospect of losing Donbas in Trump-Putin talks

As Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin prepare to meet in Alaska to discuss the fate of Ukraine, one eastern region in particular will be the focus of Ukrainian fears that a peace deal could be a capitulation to Russia: Donetsk, which Moscow has coveted for more than a decade and now aims to seize entirely.

Donetsk, rich in coal, iron and other minerals, and once the heart of the country’s industrial rust belt, has been embattled since Russia first fomented an armed separatist uprising there in 2014.

Putin is now pushing to seize the 30% of the region that his forces do not occupy, using the negotiations to achieve what he could not win on the battlefield, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday. The battlefield effort, however, also continues with Russian forces on the offensive – and making gains – across the region.

Zelenskyy has flatly rejected the idea of surrendering land.

“We will not leave Donbas. We cannot do this,” Zelenskyy said, using the collective term for Donetsk and neighbouring Luhansk, during a briefing with journalists in Kyiv on Tuesday. “Everyone forgets the first part – our territories are illegally occupied.”

Precisely what will be discussed in Alaska remains to be seen.

A small group of protesters has urged Trump not to sell out Ukraine at talks between him and Putin towards ending Russia's war in Ukraine scheduled for tomorrow in Alaska. Photo / Getty Images

Two conflicting emotions are paramount among Ukrainians: exhaustion from the war, now in its fourth blood-soaked year, and revulsion at the idea of rewarding Russia in any way for its unprovoked invasion.

Many Ukrainians seem unwilling to accept that all or part of the territories may be lost, even if Ukraine does not officially recognise a border change.

“No one recognises these territories as being under Russian control – just as no one recognised occupied Luhansk or Sevastopol from 2014 to 2022, even though de facto they were under Russian control,” said Oleksandr, a Ukrainian serviceman now fighting in Donetsk who spoke on the condition that he be identified only by first name because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

If a peace deal is signed, Oleksandr added, it would not necessarily freeze the front line, because Moscow could regroup and launch another full-scale attack. “No one believes it would really be a freeze,” Oleksandr said.

Surrendering territory to Russia and untold numbers of Ukrainian citizens to Russian occupation would not be an easy decision, but there might be no choice, said a Ukrainian businessman with interests in Donetsk. Like some others interviewed for this article, he spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

“Looking with cold eyes, I would say that with this situation, this is what we can get,” the businessman said. “But if you ask me as a Ukrainian, as a citizen, of course I’m not satisfied.”

However, the businessman said that despite inevitable misgivings, “everybody will choose to stop the war. Because people are sick and tired of the war”.

Economically, a swap of territory – trading occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia for unoccupied parts of Donetsk – could work, he said, as Zaporizhzhia contains key mineral deposits and mines, as well as the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Enerhodar, the largest atomic energy station in Europe.

For some, any deal would be welcome, even a temporary one.

“I don’t know a single person in my unit who wants to keep fighting,” said Eugene, a member of the Ukrainian National Guard who serves in Donetsk and originally comes from Luhansk. He spoke on the condition that he be identified only by first name because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

“Everyone understands what Russia is; everyone understands that it’s basically a three-year truce,” he said, using the examples of Chechnya and Georgia, where Russia resumed fighting in what became long conflicts.

“It’s not cool at all to see all these people with torn-off heads, legs, arms,” Eugene said, lacing his speech with obscenities. “And I no longer understand what we’re doing this for.”

“Honestly, I just want to close my eyes so all this would be over, so everyone would just [expletive] off.”

Zelenskyy said that Ukrainian territory was not his “private property” to give away.

What’s more, without security guarantees, Russia would use the region as a “springboard” to invade other parts of Ukraine – Putin would have an “open path” to the Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions, the President said.

Ultimately, any changes to Ukraine’s boundaries must be enshrined in the country’s constitution, Zelenskyy said – a difficult process in a fractious democracy such as Ukraine. “I’m not going to surrender my country, because I have no right to do so,” he said.

In contrast, after holding illegal sham referendums in occupied Ukraine, Putin swiftly rewrote his country’s constitution to incorporate the four Ukrainian regions into the Russian Federation, including parts of those regions that Russian troops do not control.

Following Ukraine’s pro-European, anti-Kremlin Euromaidan revolution, Moscow set off a war in Donbas in 2014.

The Kremlin directed local proxy fighters there and supplied them with arms. At times, they also sent Russian troops without markings or insignia to back them up. More than 14,000 people were killed, the United Nations said.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it pushed even further into Donetsk, and in June this year occupied all of Luhansk. In recent weeks, Moscow’s forces have made major advances, but the key Donetsk cities of Kramatorsk, Sloviansk and Kostiantynivka remain under Ukrainian control.

But even a ceasefire leaving the front line where it currently stands would freeze Russian control over a large portion of Donetsk, all of Luhansk, and significant parts of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

Russian control could ultimately extend beyond that, if the final agreement involves a “land for peace” element – ceding to Russia all land that it currently occupies, or large portions after swaps with Ukraine.

Recent opinion polls show growing support for a negotiated end to the war among Ukrainians, though they reject Russian demands.

Last week, the US-based Gallup polling firm said that a survey in early July showed more than two-thirds of Ukrainians wanted to stop the war as soon as possible through talks – a strong reversal from 2022, when about the same percentage said Ukraine should fight to regain its territory.

However, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, in a poll conducted from the end of July through the beginning of August, found that most Ukrainians remain opposed to any plan that formally cedes Moscow the occupied territories.

“Despite the aggressive actions of the Russians on the front and the brutal air attacks on civilian cities over the past few months, Ukrainian public opinion on issues of war and peace has not fundamentally changed,” KIIS executive director Anton Hrushetskyi said in a report summarising the results. “Ukrainians, as before, demonstrate openness to negotiations and the possibility, albeit reluctantly, of approving difficult decisions.”

Whether territories that Russia occupies are recognised as officially part of Russia is the main issue, said another businessman with interests in Donetsk.

“None of these questions are easy to answer, because, firstly, is [Russia’s control] de facto or de jure?” he said. “De facto, they’re already under control. If the agreement is simply that the conflict is frozen on or near the current line of contact, that’s what everyone expects as a peace agreement.”

“The next point is, is [whether] those territories will, de jure, be subsumed into Russia with the agreement of the Ukrainian state?” he said. “I think that is where the difficult discussions will take place.”

Still, a significant portion of the Ukrainian population will oppose a peace deal, whatever form it takes, said a former high-ranking Ukrainian official. “Our President is in a very difficult position right now.”

If there is a ceasefire in which Russia receives territory, “part of society will be dissatisfied”, the former official said. “If there is no ceasefire, the other part will be displeased. And to find this golden mean should be extremely difficult.”

Any agreement will lead to political instability in Ukraine, which Russia can manipulate and encourage, the former official warned, adding: “There is no good agreement for Ukraine.”

Anastacia Galouchka and Siobhán O’Grady contributed to this report.