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PUTIN’S UKRAINE PROPOSAL BACKED BY TRUMP CENTERS ON DONBAS.
HERE’S WHY.  
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Anatoly Kurmanaev, Ksenia Churmanova and Nataliya Vasilyeva
August 17, 2025
The New York Times
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_ The traditionally Russian-speaking area is at the heart of what the
Russian president calls the “root causes” of the war, and taking
it over is near the top of his list of territorial and political
demands. _

A Ukrainian soldier at a frontline position outside Toretsk, in the
Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. The area is at the center of
territorial disputes between Ukraine and Russia., Tyler Hicks/The New
York Times

 

The proposal to end the war in Ukraine that emerged from the summit
[[link removed]] in
Alaska between President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of
Russia centers on persuading Kyiv to give up the Donbas
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the industrial region in the east.

The traditionally Russian-speaking area has been at the heart of what
Mr. Putin calls the “root causes
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of the war, and taking it over is near the top of his list of
territorial and political demands.

Mr. Putin has tried to control the Donbas since 2014, first through
separatist proxies and then by invading and annexing the region in
2022 [[link removed]]. Since the
full-scale invasion, the Donbas has been the site of the war’s
deadliest battles, and is the main focus of Russia’s summer
offensive
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The Kremlin’s forces and its separatist allies have conquered about
87 percent of the Donbas since 2014, according to data from DeepState
[[link removed]], a Ukrainian group that tracks
battlefield developments. Russian forces are now chipping away at the
2,600 square miles of the region that remain in Ukrainian hands with
very heavy losses. Without a cease-fire, the battle for the Donbas is
almost certain to stretch into next year and cost tens of thousands of
lives, military analysts say.

The region’s fate could shape the outcome of the war.

What is Putin offering?

The substance of a peace deal discussed by Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin in
Alaska on Friday remains murky. The few known details come from
the U.S. president’s telling of the discussion
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a later call to European officials.

Mr. Putin is demanding the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from the
Donbas, according to two senior European officials who were briefed on
the call. In return, Mr. Putin is offering to freeze the conflict in
the rest of Ukraine along the current front lines and to provide a
written promise not to attack again, according to the senior European
officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private
talks.

Mr. Trump has called on President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to
take the deal. “Russia is a very big power, and they’re not,” he
said on Fox News
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meeting Mr. Putin.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Trump in Alaska on
Friday. Mr. Trump backed Mr. Putin’s proposal for a sweeping peace
agreement based on Ukraine ceding territory to Russia. Doug Mills/The
New York Times

Mr. Zelensky has categorically rejected giving up any territory not
already under Russian occupation. “We will not leave the Donbas,”
he told reporters last week. “We cannot do that.”

Mr. Zelensky is scheduled to meet Mr. Trump on Monday at the White
House.

The Ukrainian authorities estimate that more than 200,000 civilians
still live in the corner of the Donbas that they control, primarily in
the densely populated and heavily fortified industrial sprawl in and
around the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

Why is Putin demanding the Donbas?

Since invading Ukraine in 2022, Moscow annexed four Ukrainian regions
after holding referendums widely denounced as shams. These regions
included Donetsk and Luhansk, which together make up the Donbas.

Of the four annexed regions, Russia fully controls only one, Luhansk.

Mr. Putin’s ground forces have fought in eight other Ukrainian
regions [[link removed]] since
2022, eventually withdrawing from some and occupying slivers of
others.

It is the Donbas, however, that is at the center of Mr. Putin’s
vision of the war, one shaped by his belief in the historical unity of
Russian speakers across the former Soviet Union.

 

Mr. Putin has initially presented the invasion as the defense of the
region’s pro-Russian separatists, who had fought against the
government in Kyiv with the Kremlin’s military and financial support
since 2014.

That pledge makes control of the Donbas a crucial condition for Mr.
Putin to declare the job done in Ukraine, said Konstantin Remchukov,
an editor in Moscow with Kremlin ties.

People in Luhansk turned out to show support for Russia’s stated
annexation of four regions of Ukraine in 2022, including Luhansk. EPA,
via Shutterstock

Mr. Remchukov and other Kremlin commentators have speculated that Mr.
Putin may be willing to trade other occupied territory to get the rest
of the Donbas.

“Donetsk is perceived as way more ‘ours’ than Dnipro, Sumy or
Kharkiv,” said Sergei Markov, a Moscow-based political scientist and
former Kremlin adviser, referring to Ukrainian regions with a limited
presence of Russian troops.

What are Putin’s claims based on?

The Donbas has been contested since Ukraine first emerged as a state
in the early 20th century, when Ukrainian nationalists, Communists and
Russian monarchists battled for the region’s industrial riches in a
chaotic period after the Bolshevik Revolution.

Most of the region’s population was Ukrainian until Stalin’s
campaigns of forced industrialization and terror led to the migration
of Russian workers to the region’s coal mines and factories, mass
killing of Ukrainian farmers and the suppression of Ukrainian
language.

By the time the Soviet Union collapsed, about two-thirds of residents
of the Donbas considered Russian their first language, according to
census data. Russian cultural identity and the language became even
more dominant
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the first decades after Ukrainian independence.

About 90 percent of Donbas voters cast ballots for Viktor F.
Yanukovych, a pro-Russian candidate, in Ukraine’s 2010 presidential
election. The toppling of Mr. Yanukovych, then president, by
protesters in Kyiv four years later led Mr. Putin to seize Crimea from
Ukraine and engineer an insurgency in the Donbas.

The insurgency created an anti-Russian backlash in the region. In
Ukraine’s last presidential election, in 2019, the Ukrainian-held
part of Donbas voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Zelensky, a Russian
speaker who promised to bring peace without sacrificing Ukrainian
sovereignty.

 

Mr. Putin, meanwhile, was turning to increasingly bellicose
nationalism to try to rally domestic support after years of economic
stagnation. His propaganda machine tried to rally Russians to the
cause of the Donbas, a path that eventually led to a full-scale war.

These propaganda efforts never achieved wide appeal in Russia.

An independent poll
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few days before the invasion found that just a quarter of Russians
supported bringing Donetsk and Luhansk into the Russian Federation.

Obstacles in Pokrovsk, Ukraine, intended to slow the advance of
Russian forces in November. Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Will Putin stop at the Donbas?

Mr. Putin has periodically alluded
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annexing other parts of Ukraine, leading Ukrainian officials and many
Western politicians and analysts to argue that the war would continue
after Russia takes the Donbas, whether by force or diplomacy.

Their views are shared by Russian nationalists and many Russian
soldiers
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who have called on Mr. Putin to carry on fighting for the rest of the
land in the two other annexed regions, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

 

Other pro-war commentators have said Russia would keep fighting until
toppling the government of Mr. Zelensky and installing a more pliant
one. Many independent analysts, however, doubt whether Russia has the
economic and military resources to press its offensive much farther
beyond the Donbas. The Russian economy is stagnating
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and its revenues are falling. This will make it difficult for the
Kremlin to maintain the current pace of the fighting into the next
year without significantly reducing the Russians’ living standards.

Mr. Putin’s authoritarian rule and weakening economic outlook may
persuade him to settle for the Donbas, at least for now, according to
some analysts.

“Russian society is in such a deplorable state that it would be
willing to accept almost any outcome of the war,” said Tatiana
Stanovaya, a Russian politics expert at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia
Center. “We can imagine various degrees of discontent from certain
marginal segments of society — “ultra-patriots” and the likes of
them — but the Kremlin can manage it.”

_STEVEN ERLANGER contributed reporting from Berlin, and Constant
Méheut from Kyiv, Ukraine._

_ANATOLY KURMANAEV
[[link removed]] covers Russia and its
transformation following the invasion of Ukraine._

_Subscribe to the NEW YORK TIMES
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* Donald Trump
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* Vladimir Putin
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* Ukraine
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* Donbass
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