Why does Russia want Donbas? 6 things to know about the region Ukraine is being pressured to give up

Russian President Vladimir Putin is once again trying to seize through political backchanneling what he has failed to capture by force.

According to the Financial Times (FT), Putin once again is trying to entice U.S. President Donald Trump to pressure Ukraine into surrendering the eastern Donbas region — a territory Moscow has fought to occupy for more than a decade.

The newspaper reported that during their last meeting, Trump urged President Volodymyr Zelensky to give Putin the entire Donbas, an area comprising two Ukrainian regions — Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts — including areas still under Ukrainian control.

U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump's main intermediary with the Kremlin, reportedly told the Ukrainian delegation that Donbas should be surrendered because it is "mostly Russian-speaking" — echoing one of the Kremlin's oldest propaganda lines.

So what is Donbas? And why is Russia so obsessed with it?

Where is Donbas?

Donbas is a historical region in eastern Ukraine. The term "Donbas" is short for "Donets Coal Basin," named after the Siverskyi Donets River that runs through the region.

The word has been in use since the 19th century and has referred not only to modern Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts but also parts of Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and even regions of southern Russia, where the Siverskyi Donets River also flows.

The region is best known as Ukraine's industrial and coal-mining heartland — a symbol of the country's heavy industry. Yet parts of Donbas are also agricultural, with sprawling farmlands surrounding its industrial centers.