Donbas and Beyond: Territorial Obstacles to Peace in Ukraine

Amid the accelerated diplomatic activity around the US proposal for a peace agreement, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on December 8 that Kiev has neither the legal nor the moral basis to cede any part of its territory.

“Of course, Russia insists that we give up territory. We certainly do not want to give anything. We are fighting for this,” said Zelensky, whose country has resisted Russian military aggression since 2014 and a full-scale invasion by Russian forces since February 2022.

It sounds clear. But in the same online conversation with reporters, he said that the negotiations with Washington involve “complex issues related to territory” and that “no compromise has been found there yet.”

Here’s a look at territorial control in Ukraine, one of the biggest obstacles to peace.

 

 

The goals and obsessions that led Russian President Vladimir Putin to launch the invasion go far beyond territorial conquest, encompassing a desire to subjugate Ukraine, weaken the West, and undo some of the results of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet empire.

But control of Donetsk and Luhansk, which make up the Donbass, is clearly the key objective. And along with dominance of Crimea and parts of Zaporizhia and Kherson regions, that is probably the minimum Putin finds acceptable, at least for now, so as not to look back home as if he had lost a war he had originally expected would bring Ukraine to its knees in a matter of weeks.

The problem for Putin is that his forces have failed to take all of Donbas. Almost all of Luhansk Oblast, except for a few small areas, is under Russian occupation, accounting for nearly a fifth of the territory of Ukraine controlled by Moscow.

 

But Donetsk has proven more difficult: Russian troops control about 77 percent of the region after a slow and grueling offensive advance, but have failed to definitively take the devastated town of Pokrovsk, and several other populated areas remain under Kiev control.

The huge losses in manpower may have further strengthened Putin’s determination to complete the conquest of the region, lest the bloodshed be seen as in vain.

In any case, he has made full control of Donbas a fundamental requirement of any peace agreement, saying last week that Russia would seize the remaining part by force if diplomatic efforts fail to result in Ukraine’s withdrawal.

For Ukraine, the part of Donbass it still controls is just as crucial, if not more so. Any peace deal that cedes territory to Russia or consolidates the Kremlin’s control over the occupied areas would be widely seen in Kiev and the West as a reward for Moscow’s aggression – but an agreement that obliges Ukraine to withdraw from territory that its forces have managed to defend, also at enormous human cost, would be even more difficult to accept.

That could have major political consequences for Ukraine and Zelensky, which is one reason why Putin wants it to happen.

As Zelensky pointed out on December 8, there is also a strong legal obstacle to handing over territory to another country: the Ukrainian Constitution, which states that all territorial changes “shall be resolved exclusively” through a national referendum.

 

 

Another complication, if only because Putin insists it is, is Moscow’s claim—unfounded in reality but established in Russian law for more than three years—that the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson regions are part of Russia, not Ukraine. Putin has sought to emphasize this rhetorical point by declaring that Russia will “liberate” the rest of Donbas, rather than saying it will seize or occupy Ukrainian territory.

The seemingly irreconcilable dilemma over Donbas is reflected in the 28-point U.S. peace proposal, which caused a diplomatic storm when it emerged last month.

The draft is widely seen as overwhelmingly favorable to Russia, and Ukraine has opposed it in talks with U.S. officials, as well as with European leaders who have rallied to support Kiev’s efforts to avoid a unilateral agreement.

But the wording referring to Donbas, which has clearly provoked outrage in Ukraine, also seemed unlikely to satisfy Russia. Along with Crimea, which Russia occupied in 2014, the draft proposal stated that Donetsk and Luhansk regions would be “recognized as de facto Russian” – not de jure, as Moscow wants. It also stated that Ukraine would withdraw its forces from the part of Donetsk region it holds, and that the territory would become a “neutral demilitarized buffer zone” that would be “internationally recognized” as part of Russia but that Russian forces would not be allowed to enter.

Among other potential pitfalls, such as the question of who would monitor compliance with the agreement in Donbas, some analysts said that de facto recognition was a contradiction in terms: recognition, specifically set out in a peace agreement, suggests formal acceptance, while de facto implies informal acceptance of facts on the ground.

Zelensky said on December 8 that the US draft had been reduced from 28 to 20 points, removing some of the provisions least favorable to Ukraine. But the draft has not been made public, so it is not clear how the territorial issue is addressed – although Zelensky’s comments made it clear that Kiev was not happy with that at the time.

 

 

In addition to Crimea and Donbas, the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions also pose a challenge to potential peacemakers. Russia holds a portion of each of these regions, giving it a "land corridor" from the Russian border to the isthmus connecting occupied Crimea to mainland Ukraine, as well as control of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant - the largest in Europe and another sensitive issue in the peace talks.

But after Ukraine retook control of Kherson in a major counteroffensive in the fall of 2022, Russia no longer holds the capitals of any of those regions. Amid the U.S. push for peace that began when Trump took office in January of this year, Moscow has at times seemed open to a deal that would leave Ukraine in control of the territory it holds, as envisioned in the 28-point proposal.

 

But Putin challenged that idea last week with bellicose rhetoric, claiming that Russia would seize not only Donbas but also “Novorossiya” by force if Ukraine did not withdraw, using a highly controversial term that dates back to the time when Tsarist Russia dominated large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine.

In addition to Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions, Russia also controls significantly smaller areas of territory in the Kharkiv, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions. The 28-point plan stated that "Russia will abandon other agreed territories it controls outside the five areas," but did not provide details.