On Friday, we noted that President Trump had described a peace deal to end the Russo-Ukrainian War, in which both sides would simply lay down their arms, walk away from the lines as they exist, and accept that as the new status quo.
On Sunday, the UK Telegraph revealed that President Trump’s top negotiator, Steve Witkoff, has been pushing Ukraine to give up the Donetsk area in return for peace, a major part of what President Trump would have Ukraine surrender in his earlier statement.
Donald Trump’s lead negotiator has been pushing Volodymyr Zelensky to hand over the entire Donetsk region to Russia in order to end the war in Ukraine, it has emerged.
Steve Witkoff, who has met with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, five times this year, told the Ukrainian delegation visiting the White House last Friday to surrender the territory its forces control.
It is one of the key demands made by Putin, who made clear in a phone call with Mr Trump last week that he still wants Ukraine to give up the stretch of land as a precondition for peace, The Washington Post reported.
However, the surrender of Donetsk is a red line for Ukraine, which has long refused to cede the territory, which Russia has failed to capture despite fighting since 2014.
This doesn’t seem like a deal Ukraine would be anxious to accept.
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As I wrote on Friday:
At present, Russia controls a large swath of eastern Ukraine, including the Donbas region, the cities of Luhansk, Horlivka, Donetsk, Melitopol, and the port city of Berdiansk. Russia has also seized some key infrastructure, such as the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. This is about 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory, including between 3 and 3.5 million Ukrainians. And these are just the post-2022 invasion territories taken by Russia, which doesn’t include Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014.
That’s a bad deal for Ukraine by any measure, and one they are reportedly unlikely to consider.
Mr Trump, who has called on both sides to “stop the killing” and “make a deal”, has agreed to meet Putin in Hungary within a fortnight.
But the Russian president’s continued insistence on the surrender of Donetsk suggests that a fundamental obstacle towards a ceasefire deal remains.
In the call with Mr Trump, Putin said Russia could cede parts of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson provinces currently occupied by his forces.
However, a senior European diplomat told The Washington Post that Ukraine would never agree to such a trade.
It’s unlikely Ukraine will consider a trade of what is rightfully Ukrainian territory in exchange for what is rightfully Ukrainian territory; Putin is, in this, just offering to give Ukraine a little bit back of what they have taken. It’s unlikely Ukraine will accept the current lines as they are, either.
The eastern parts of Ukraine, including the Donetsk area, are home to a large number of Russian-speaking people, and that’s a big part of the problem; Vladimir Putin no doubt wants those people to be a part of Russia. The fact that there is a fair amount of mineral wealth in eastern Ukraine is another factor.
President Trump will be meeting with President Putin in Hungary, in large part to discuss this ongoing war. Whether that meeting will yield any deal to end the war remains to be seen.
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