Why the oval map played a crucial role in Trump’s point of view on the Ukrainian war

Russia occupied a fifth of Ukrainian territory – and a large card showing the shaded area in red has been set up in the oval office as if to highlight this point for the talks of President Donald Trump with Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday.

“I guess you all saw the card,” Trump told Fox News on Tuesday. “A large part of the territory is taken and this territory has been taken.”

The White House message to Ukraine is undoubtedly. This land has disappeared and it is time to consider a territorial compromise with Vladimir Putin or, as some have called it, exchanges of land.

The team of Zelensky had brought his own card to Reunion and the Ukrainian chief later said that he had “fought with what is on this card” during his conversation with Trump, concerning “who controls what – not by hearing, but in reality”.

Although he believed that he had made progress to correct the false impressions on Trump’s point of view on Tuesday was the same on Tuesday. It was clear, he said, that the strength of Russia was “so clearly much more powerful, and you know, it is not as if they stopped”.

When he was asked what the feeling in the room looked like with European leaders concerning land exchanges, he said: “Now they talk about Donbas, but Donbas right now is … detained and controlled by Russia.”

Find out more: War monitoring in Ukraine with cards

Before the start of the war in the East in 2014, the rich mining region of Donbas in Ukraine represented around 16% of the economic production of Ukraine.

Putin would have told Trump that he wanted the entire Donbas region to be part of a large peace agreement.

This would certainly allow the leader of Russia a considerable amount of blood and treasures.

Zelensky said that he had also discussed the percentages on the menu of the White House which showed Russian control in a number of Ukrainian regions, ranging from 99% of Luhansk and 76% Donetsk to Donbas; 73% of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in the southeast; 4% in Kharkiv in the northeast; and 1% in Sumy and Mykolav.

Analysis of the latest data from the American War Institute led to figures similar to the White House, and all the differences could be reduced to different methodologies used, in particular on the extent of the Russian control of an area. The party could be under limited control or simply claimed by Moscow.

In areas where the White House suggests that 1% of a region is under Russian control, which can only reflect that the Russians have a limited presence, as in Mykolav in the south, or where they were largely repulsed, as in Sumy in the North.

Whatever the real figure for Russian control in Donetsk, the fortress cities of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk neighboring in the Donetsk region still are home to large populations.

Local officials say that around 242,000 people live in areas controlled by the Ukrainian in the Donetsk region, and no Ukrainian head of state would plan to put their territory in Moscow.

Although the Russian forces have made progress in recent months, the ISW believes that seizure of the rest of the Donetsk region “would most likely take Russian forces for several years after several difficult campaigns.”

Zelensky said the Ukrainian card he had shown that Trump had shown in the last 1,000 days that Russia had managed to occupy less than 1% of Ukrainian territory.

Analysts of the Deepstateua cartography group of Ukraine said that this has been translated by 5,842 km2 since November 2022.

While Russia was an operational success at the start of the large -scale invasion, Deepstate stresses that a large part of the occupied territory was then released.

Russia, however, has made undeniable advances in the last two to three months, even if more broadly the front line has changed little since the first months of the war.

Defense analyst Konrad Muzyka, who heads Rochan Consulting, said the Russian advance has clearly accelerated in certain Eastern regions around Kupiansk in the Kharkiv and Kreminna region in Luhansk.

“We see much more fire and the Ukrainians are not really able to deploy enough firefighters to extinguish them,” he told the BBC.

Muzyka quotes a lack of Ukrainian labor to defend a long front line, but also the increased use of drones by Russia targeting soldiers, their equipment and in particular their artillery.

Meanwhile, Russia was able to recruit 30 to 35,000 soldiers and even with the heavy losses they have suffered on the ground, they were able to constitute large operational and strategic reserve forces, he says.

But Russia’s rapid gains in the eastern limited areas have so far been twinned elsewhere.

An attempt at Russian terrains seized 10 to 15 km in the territory controlled by the Ukrainian near Dobroplyya in the Donetsk region was successfully fought by Ukrainian forces last week, according to the military leaders of Ukraine.

And although Russia contains certain pockets of land in the regions of Sumy and Kharkiv, Ukraine still controls around 6,600 km2 of Donbas.

Putin has not only claimed large expanses of Ukraine, he has already annexed four regions as well as Crimea, even if many areas are out of its reach.

Updating the UK for Defense Intelligence recently estimated that on the basis only of “increasing progress on the battlefield so far in 2025”, it would take 4.4 more just to grasp the four regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

This alone explains the different prospects of Trump and Zelensky with regard to the cards showing the front line of 1,200 km in Ukraine.

“Thank you for the card, by the way, it was great,” said Zelensky despite their differences, “I think how to take it back.”