What Donbas would mean to Putin for Ukraine

A few days before meeting Vladimir Putin in Alaska, Donald Trump referred to what he called “land exchanges” as a peace condition.

For the Ukrainians, it was a confusing phrase turn. What land had to be exchanged? Has Ukraine offered part of Russia, in exchange for the land that Russia had taken by force?

While Volodymyr Zelensky is preparing to go to Washington on Monday to meet Trump, there is probably no “exchange” element to the thought of the American president.

Instead, he would have planned to press Zelensky to give up all the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in exchange for Russia freezing the rest of the front line – a proposal presented by Putin in Alaska.

Luhansk is already almost entirely under Russian control. But Ukraine has kept around 30% Donetsk, including several key cities and fortifications, at the cost of tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives.

The two regions – known together under the name of Donbas – are rich in minerals and industry. Puting them to Russia would now be a “tragedy,” said Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak.

“This is a Ukrainian territory,” said Hrytsak. “And the inhabitants of these regions – in particular minors – have played a huge role in strengthening Ukrainian identity.”

The region had also produced “politicians, poets and famous dissidents,” he said. “And now refugees who will no longer be able to go home if it becomes Russian.”

At least 1.5 million Ukrainians have fled the donbas since the start of the Russian attack in 2014. More than three million are estimated at the Russian occupation. It is estimated that 300,000 others are in the parties where Ukraine still has control.

In the areas closest to the front line, life is already a dangerous struggle. Andriy Borylo, a 55-year-old military chaplain in the seriously struck town of Slovians, said in a telephone interview that Shells had landed next to his house this weekend.

“This is a very difficult situation here,” he said. “There is a feeling of resignation and abandonment. I don’t know how much we have the strength to endure. Someone must protect us. But who?”

Borylo had followed the news from Alaska, he said. “I put it on Trump, not Zelensky. But they take everything from me, and it’s a betrayal.”

Zelensky has always said that Ukraine would not put the Donbas in exchange for peace. And confidence in Russia to respect such an arrangement – rather than simply using the annexed land for future attacks – is low.

For this and other reasons, around 75% of Ukrainians oppose any official cessation of land to Russia, according to the survey of the International Sociology Institute in kyiv.

But Ukraine is also deeply tired by war. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed and injured since the start of the large -scale invasion. People have the end of suffering, especially in donbas.

“You ask questions about the surrender of the Donetsk region, well, I measure this war not in kilometers but in human life,” said Yevhen Tkachov, 56, emergency rescue worker in the city of Donetsk de Kramatorsk.

“I am not ready to give tens of thousands of lives for several thousand square kilometers,” he said. “Life is more important than the territory.”

For some, this is what it comes down to the end. Land against life. This leaves President Zelensky “to a crossroads without good road in front of him,” said Volodmyr Ariev, a Ukrainian deputy for the European Opposition Solidarity Party.

“We don’t have enough forces to continue the war for an unlimited time,” said Ariev. “But if Zelensky conceded this field, it would not only be a break in our constitution, it could have the characteristics of betrayal.”

And yet, it is not clear in Ukraine by which mechanism such an agreement could even be concluded. Any official transfer of the country’s territory requires the approval of the Parliament and a referendum of the people.

More likely, it would be a de facto control of control, without official recognition of the territory as Russian. But even in this case, the process is not well understood, said the Ukrainian deputy Inna Sovsun.

“There is no real understanding of the procedure,” she said. “Does the president simply sign the agreement? It must be the government? Parliament? There is no legal procedure implemented because, you know, the editors of the Constitution have not thought about it.”

Things can become clearer after Zelensky speaks with Trump in Washington on Monday – the first visit of the Ukrainian leader in the White House since a disastrous confrontation at the Oval Office in February. In the midst of the misfortune left by the summit of Alaska, there was a possible glow of good news for Ukraine.

Trump seemed to reverse his position on security guarantees after the summit, suggesting that he was ready to join Europe to provide military protection in Ukraine against future Russian attacks.

For Ukrainians, surveys show that security guarantees are an absolutely vital element of any potential agreement on the territory or anything else.

“The inhabitants of Ukraine will accept various forms of security guarantees,” said Anton Grushchetsky, director of the kyiv International Sociology Institute, “but they need it.”

For Yevhen Tkachov, the Kramatorsk emergency worker, the exchange of territory could only be considered with “real guarantees, not only written promises”.

“Just at that time, more or less, I am in favor of giving donbas to Russia,” he said. “If the British royal navy is stationed in the port of Odesa, then I agree.”

As various ways of peace are floated and discussed, sometimes in the style of concluding transactions preferred by President Trump, there is a risk of losing sight of the real people involved – people who have already lived a decade of war and who could lose even more now in exchange for peace.

Donbas was a place full of Ukrainians from all walks of life, said Vitalii Dribnytsia, a Ukrainian historian. “We are not only talking about culture, politics, demography, we are talking about people,” he said.

Donetsk may not have cultural reputation somewhere like Odesa, said Drinytsia. But it was Ukraine. “And any corner of Ukraine, whether or not he has a great cultural meaning, is Ukraine,” he said.