Zelensky says ‘the territorial issue remains the most difficult element’ of the peace talks

In the Ukraine war, western Donetsk has taken on an importance far beyond its strategic value. With neither side ready to pay the political price of yielding, the deadlock risks dangerous escalation.

The futures of Ukraine, Russia and European security now hang on a few small half-ruined towns in the northwestern part of Donetsk oblast still held by Ukraine.

As part of the ongoing negotiations, the Russian government continues to demand that Ukraine withdraw from this territory as part of a peace settlement. This was incorporated in the initial ‘28-point plan’ worked out between the US envoy Steve Witkoff and his Russian counterpart Kirill Dmitriev – though with the proviso that while the area would come under Russian administration, it would be demilitarised, reducing the strategic cost to Ukraine. Kyiv, backed by France, Germany and the UK, has so far categorically rejected this point.

Nearly everyone in Russia says it is politically impossible for President Putin to give up this demand – even if Ukraine, the US and Europe were to agree to all Russia’s other key demands, including a formal, categorical ban on the further NATO expansion and on Western troops in Ukraine.

‘Territory the hardest element’

Equally, the prevalent opinion in Ukraine is that it is politically impossible for the Ukrainian government to accede to this. President Zelensky has said that ‘the territorial issue is the most difficult element’ of the peace talks. The Trump administration is searching for possible compromises, including that the area should become a free trade zone, but that does not answer the question of who would actually govern it.

How did we get here? If during the cold war you had said that European security depended on who controlled the northwestern Donbas, even the most hawkish of hawks would have called you mad. At that time, let us remember, Soviet armies stood in the ‘Fulda Gap’ in the middle of what is now a united Germany, less than 300km from the French border. The Donbas is more than 2,000km east of Fulda. That is a measure of the West’s victory at the end of the cold war.

Since then, two different issues have (…)

Full article: 1 819 words.

Anatol Lieven

Anatol Lieven is a co-author, with George Beebe and Mark Episkopos, of the policy brief, ‘Peace Through Strength in Ukraine’, published by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Washington DC, 19 February 2025. This is an updated version of an article first published in The Nation on 28 October 2025.

Dominique Vidal is a historian and journalist, and editor (with Bertrand Badie) of the annual publication L’Etat du Monde, La Découverte, Paris

(2) Many historians have underlined the premature character of the insurrection, which was set off, they maintain, in order to steal a march on the arrival of Soviet troops.

(3) Having always denied it and blamed Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union acknowledged in 1990 that its political police, the NKVD, did indeed execute several thousand Polish officers in April-May 1940.

(4) Although the Treaty of Nice gave Poland almost equal weight to Germany, the draft Treaty of Lisbon, with its double majority system, put Poland at a disadvantage. The Kaczyńskis therefore proposed that each country’s weight should be based on the size of its population.

(5) AFP, 4 October 2011.

(6) A quarter of a million Poles live in Lithuania (7% of the population). They are fighting to regain their patrimony, confiscated under the Soviet Union, and to preserve the use of their language.

(7) The changes are intended to raise the retirement age progressively to 67. It is currently 65 for men and 60 for women.