With Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin potentially set to meet within weeks, the prospect of relinquishing land to secure peace for Ukraine has been floated by the US.
Despite launching an illegal invasion, Putin is understood to have demanded that Kyiv surrender the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk provinces as a condition for ending the war.
Such a move would effectively hand over Ukraine’s industrial heartland, giving Russia control of the Donbas region, where some of the heaviest fighting of the war has taken place since February 2022.
During a meeting with Donald Trump on Monday, the Ukrainian president said he is ready for a trilateral meeting involving Putin to try and reach a peace deal.
Trump is keen on a lasting peace deal and, like Putin, has rejected a temporary ceasefire - a proposal initially made by the US president himself.
“We’re going to work with Ukraine,” he said on Monday. “We’re going to work with everybody, and we’re going to make sure that if there’s peace, the peace is going to stay long term. This is very long term.”
Any concession of large regions of Ukrainian territory would be a bitter pill to swallow for Kyiv.
While Russia controls almost all of Luhansk, it holds about 70 per cent of Donetsk.
Zelensky has previously insisted he would reject any proposal to withdraw from the industrial Donbas region, claiming it would “open a bridgehead” for a wider Russian offensive.
However, sources close to the White House have said that Mr Trump appears to have endorsed the move, and will likely be raising the issue during his meeting with Mr Zelensky in the Oval Office on Monday.
The Russian president also said he would freeze the frontline in the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where his forces occupy a large territory.
These areas have been long coveted by Putin, who first entered the Donbas region during an offensive in 2014, which saw Russia annex the Crimean peninsula.
Russian-backed separatists broke away from the Ukrainian government to proclaim the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk independent “people’s republics” and, as a result, Moscow captured more than a third of Ukraine’s eastern territory.
It is currently believed that around 88 per cent of the Donbas is under Russian control, while approximately 6,600 sq km is still being held by Ukraine.
In recent months, Moscow has reinforced its efforts to seize these remaining areas, pushing towards cities like Pokrovsk and intensifying drone and air strikes.
It is crucially important to Ukraine, given that the region holds one of the largest coal reserves and is viewed as an energy powerhouse by Kyiv.
It has also been described as a “fortress belt” by the Institute for the Study of War, given that Donetsk forms the main fortified defensive line along the eastern region, halting Russia in their tracks.
“Ukraine is holding a key defensive line across Donetsk,” says Elina Beketova, a fellow at the Centre for European Policy Analysis, describing a “fortified zone buildup over years because the war began 11 years ago”.
“It’s not just trenches, it’s a deep, layered defence with bunkers, anti-tank ditches, minefields, and industrial areas built into the terrain. The area includes dominant heights, rivers, and urban zones that make it extremely hard to capture,” explains Beketova.
Relinquishing the territory would be “catastrophic” for Russia, especially if they are not given concrete security guarantees such as Article 5 protection from Nato.
However, Putin made it clear that he would not fall back on core demands to “resolve root causes of the conflict”, that includes Ukraine becoming a neutral state and abandoning Nato aspirations.
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