Monday Briefing: Would Ukraine Give Up the Donbas?

Would Ukraine give up the Donbas?

It is not clear where the recent efforts to end the war in Ukraine will lead. But the Donbas, a mineral-rich territory that consists of two regions, Donetsk and Luhansk, will be at the center of any negotiations.

President Vladimir Putin has demanded that Ukraine give up all of the Donbas, including the territory Kyiv controls. More than 200,000 Ukrainians live in that area, which includes cities like Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. But doing so could politically torpedo Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as polls show that most Ukrainians oppose ceding territory to Russia.

Relinquishing the Donbas would mean surrendering “Ukraine’s first line of defense,” my colleague Michael Schwirtz explained in the video above. Michael, a global intelligence correspondent, and Anatoly Kurmanaev, a foreign correspondent covering Russia, break down why the Donbas is important.

“When I visited, there were lines and lines of trenches. Unforgiving topography,” Michael said. “There’s highlands, lowlands. If you basically gave this region over to Russia, they would get all the advantages that Ukraine is now getting from this region and be able to turn that against Ukraine. That is what Ukrainians are most fearful of.”

Analysts and former officials said the only way Zelensky could make giving up the land palatable to the Ukrainian public would be to deliver an American-backed security guarantee. But that has eluded Ukraine since President Trump ruled out NATO membership.