Why Handing Donbas to Putin Would Be So Difficult for Ukraine
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For Kyiv, losing its eastern regions wouldn't just be a major social and political disaster. It would also be a military nightmare.
After President Donald Trump met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska last week, the Republican reportedly told European leaders he backed a Kremlin proposal that would mean Ukraine cedes its two eastern regions, Donetsk and Luhansk, while freezing the conflict elsewhere. Donetsk and Luhansk are collectively known as the Donbas.
This presents huge problems for Kyiv. Ukraine has always said it will not let go of territory occupied by Russia—not to mention that it is bound by its constitution to not cede land.
Ukrainian soldiers fire on Russian positions along the front line in the Donetsk region of Ukraine on Monday, June 24, 2024.
Ukrainian soldiers fire on Russian positions along the front line in the Donetsk region of Ukraine on Monday, June 24, 2024.
AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File
"No one will deviate from this—and no one will be able to," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier this month. "Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupier."
Politically and socially, too, Zelensky's hands are tied, while on the military side, Donetsk is vital to Ukraine's defensive lines.
What Is The Donbas?
The Donbas is the term used to collectively describe Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions, in the very east of the country. They are country's industrial heartland, with a strong Russian-speaking history. The two regions were well-known for being home to Moscow-leaning groups.
They are two of the regions, or oblasts, Moscow has claimed to have annexed. The Kremlin seized control of Crimea, the peninsula to the south of mainland Ukraine, back in 2014, and propped up separatist groups in Donetsk and Luhansk.
In April 2014, Russian-backed militants proclaimed the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic as independent states. Russia covertly supported them with troops, tanks and artillery.
Moscow then said it was annexing four Ukrainian regions in fall 2022, months after launching its full-scale invasion.
Donetsk and Luhansk were among these regions, along with the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts.
Much of the heaviest fighting of the war has been concentrated in Donetsk, not least around key Ukrainian cities Russia has been desperate to capture. Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Pokrovsk—these are all Donetsk settlements that quickly became synonymous with high casualty counts and months of drawn-out, bitter battles between defending Ukrainian troops and waves of Russian soldiers.
Overall, Russia controls roughly a fifth of Ukrainian territory. Moscow controls small chunks of territory along the Russian border with Ukraine's Sumy and Kharkiv regions, while also pushing from Luhansk west into Kharkiv. The Kremlin has also seized very small areas of the southern Mykolaiv region and of Dnipropetrovsk, which borders Donetsk.
How Much of the Donbas Does Russia Control?
A Russian-appointed official claimed at the start of July that Russia had captured all of Luhansk, but Western assessments say Ukraine still controls a sliver of the region.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S.-based think tank that tracks the daily changes to the front lines in the conflict, said earlier this month Ukraine still controls roughly 6,500 square kilometers of territory in Donetsk—equivalent to a quarter of the region.
"Seizing the remainder of Donetsk Oblast will very likely take Russian forces multiple years to complete after several difficult campaigns," the ISW said in a fresh update published on Sunday.
Trump told Zelensky after the Republican met Putin in Alaska on Friday that the Kremlin chief had told him that Russia could capture all of Donetsk if it tried, Axios reported.
"Putin's claim that Russian forces will inevitably seize all of Donetsk Oblast if the war continues is false," the ISW said on Sunday. "The Russian campaign to seize all of Donetsk Oblast has been ongoing since Russia's first invasion in 2014 and remains incomplete."
Russia controls about three quarters of both the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, according to the ISW.
Why Is The Donbas So Important?
For Ukraine, it is a part of their country—a limb of the nation that Ukrainians have died for. It would be a "tragedy" for Russia to end up with control of the two regions, Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak told the BBC.
"Ukrainian people live there, under bombardment and threat to their lives, and to leave them is to betray them," Oleg Dunda, a Ukrainian parliamentarian with Zelensky's Servant of the People party, told Newsweek. To cede the territories to Russia, he continued, could run the risk of the military rebelling in Ukraine and the damage spreading out in broader Ukrainian society.
The swathes of territory Ukraine still controls in Donetsk include several settlements that have been dubbed "fortress cities," which have been key for linking up Ukraine's defenses and blocking Russia from advancing further westward for more than a decade. Cities like Kostiantynivka, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka and Sloviansk are all linked and vastly important for coordinating Ukrainian forces and logistics.
"Ukraine has spent the last 11 years pouring time, money, and effort into reinforcing the fortress belt and establishing significant defense industrial and defensive infrastructure in and around these cities," the ISW has said.
The west of the Donetsk Oblast is "bulwark" for Ukraine to shield its other regions, Oleksandr Merezhko, the chair of Ukraine's parliamentary foreign affairs committee, previously told Newsweek.
The defensive line joining up these "fortress" cities "was never taken," Dunda said. Surrendering the fortifications Ukraine has spent so long constructing "opens the way for Moscow to central Ukraine," he added.
"A withdrawal from the remaining parts of the Donbas—especially the 'fortress belt' in Donetsk would certainly make Ukraine more vulnerable," said Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the U.K.-based think tank, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
If Russia gained control of all of Donetsk in a U.S.-brokered deal, Ukrainian forces would need to quickly build up massive defenses on the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk borders, the ISW said. These areas are not well suited to becoming defensive lines, and Ukraine would need "enormous, urgent investment from its Western allies" to get new defenses against Russia in place, the think tank has assessed.
Ukraine would also be withdrawing from slightly higher ground, leaving Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk "both more open," Savill told Newsweek.
For Russia, gaining control of the Donbas has always been a core goal. Moscow sees the region in particular as part of its historical sphere of influence, and has drawn on history to justify its annexation of the two regions.
"Moscow is using a narrative of cultural and linguistic affinity to justify intervention and portray itself as a protector of the Russian-speaking population," said Natia Seskuria, an associate fellow at RUSI. "Although the Donbas region is predominantly Russian-speaking, that does not make it pro-Russian."
Not lost to either Moscow or Kyiv is how rich the Donbas is in resources, not least for steel production and coal mining, as well as minerals. It was the largest coal producer across the Soviet Union until the 1960s, according to the World Bank, and in the decades after, the Donbas "continued to play a major role in Ukraine's economic output, employment, and exports."
In 2013, the Donbas was responsible for more than a quarter of all the goods exported abroad by Ukraine, Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine's former defense minister, wrote while serving as deputy prime minister for reintegrating occupied Ukrainian areas back in 2020.
Crimea, Military Dominance and Historical Narratives
Ahead of the meeting with Zelensky, Trump said that it was up to Ukraine to agree to a peace deal, but that Ukraine regaining Crimea was off the table.
The more than 11 years the peninsula has spent under Moscow's control has seen Crimea become the base for Russia's Black Sea naval fleet—a force heavily targeted by Ukraine—and host to several major airfields and air defense sites.
"Crimea matters profoundly to both Ukraine and Russia because it combines deep historical symbolism with immense strategic value," Seskuria told Newsweek. For Russia, it's needed to project power out into the wider Black Sea and beyond, including to the Mediterranean and the Middle East, Seskuria said.
"Without it, Russia would struggle to maintain its maritime dominance, making control of Crimea essential for Putin's vision of accomplishing Russia's imperial ambitions," Seskuria added.
Losing the peninsula in 2014 was a "direct challenge" to Ukraine's national identity, as well as its sovereignty, Seskuria said.
"The loss of Crimea not only weakened Kyiv's maritime position but also gave Russia a forward base to launch its 2022 full-scale invasion, allowing rapid advances in southern Ukraine," she said.
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