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At a summit in Alaska last Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly told<\/a> U.S. President Donald Trump that Ukraine must cede control of the country\u2019s eastern Donbas region as a condition for ending the war.<\/p>\n Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly said that he will not make territorial concessions in exchange for a peace agreement, while underscoring that it\u2019s not within his constitutional authority to do so.<\/p>\n Zelensky earlier this month warned<\/a> that Russia would use the Donbas as a \u201cspringboard for a future new offensive\u201d if Ukraine fully handed it over. \u201cIf we leave Donbas of our own accord or under pressure, we will start a third war,\u201d Zelensky said. Recent polling also shows that a strong majority of Ukrainians (75 percent<\/a>) oppose formally ceding land to Russia.<\/p>\n The Donbas, which is short for \u201cDonets Basin,\u201d is an industrial and mining region that borders Russia. It\u2019s made up of two oblasts, or provinces\u2014Donetsk and Luhansk\u2014that are home to roughly 4 million people.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what you need to know about the Donbas\u2014why it has been a flash point in the Ukraine war from the start, and why it is poised to remain at the center of tensions between Kyiv and Moscow for the foreseeable future. <\/p>\n One of Putin\u2019s key justifications for invading Ukraine has centered on the Donbas. Putin, a former KGB officer whose nostalgia for the Soviet era is often on full display, has made the case<\/a> that the war in Ukraine is part of a justified effort to reclaim Russian lands, and he\u2019s frequently portrayed the Donbas as historically Russian.<\/p>\n In 2022, Putin baselessly claimed<\/a> that Ukraine was committing genocide against Russian speakers in the region. This echoed prior false claims that Putin made against Georgia<\/a>, which like Ukraine is a former Soviet republic, regarding South Ossetia before Russia invaded the country in 2008.<\/p>\n Ukraine is a former Soviet republic, and much of it was also formerly part of the Russian Empire\u2014and it\u2019s true that Ukrainians and Russians share many cultural, economic, and historical ties. But Putin has distorted history and facts with many of his claims about the country and people, which experts view as part of a broader effort to erase Ukraine\u2019s nationhood and distinct identity.<\/p>\n Putin\u2019s claim about Russian speakers being persecuted in the Donbas is \u201cgarbage propaganda\u201d and an attempt by the Russian president to justify his \u201cdecades-long obsession\u201d with \u201cdominating\u201d and \u201celiminating\u201d Ukraine, William Taylor, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, told Foreign Policy<\/em>.<\/p>\n The Donbas is heavily populated by Russian speakers, a product of the region\u2019s close proximity to and historic links with Russia. The region was an important industrial and mining hub for the Soviet Union, resulting in a major influx of Russian workers during the Soviet era\u2014particularly during a period of reconstruction<\/a> post-World War II.<\/p>\n Russian is often the first language of people in the Donbas, including ethnic Ukrainians. According to Ukraine\u2019s most recent census<\/a>, conducted in 2001, ethnic Russians comprised about one-third of the population in the Donbas, while ethnic Ukrainians made up a little over half. When the Soviet Union collapsed, roughly two-thirds<\/a> of residents of the Donbas considered Russian their first language. Recent polling also found around 51 percent<\/a> of people in eastern Ukraine speak a mix of both Ukrainian and Russian at home.<\/p>\n Though the Donbas has historic links to Russia and a large Russian-speaking population, people in the region are not necessarily sympathetic to Moscow\u2014despite Putin\u2019s claims to the contrary. Some of the Ukrainian battalions that began fighting against pro-Russia separatists in the Donbas in 2014, such as the Dnipro-1 battalion<\/a>, were Russian-speaking, for example. The Donbas is a prime example of the convoluted dynamic between language and national identity.<\/p>\n The region\u2019s voting history also paints a complex picture in terms of its sentiments toward Russia. In 1991, for example, Ukraine overwhelmingly voted for independence from the Soviet Union, including 83 percent of the Donbas. But in Ukraine\u2019s 2010 presidential elections, Viktor Yanukovych\u2019s pro-Russia party won by a landslide<\/a> in the eastern region.<\/p>\n Zelensky, whose first language was Russian and who campaigned on bringing the war in eastern Ukraine to an end, was overwhelmingly in non-occupied parts of the Donbas in the country\u2019s 2019 election.<\/p>\n Ukrainians in the Donbas have also expressed resentment<\/a> toward Russia as the war devastates their region and kills their relatives.<\/p>\n Beyond the Donbas\u2019s symbolic importance to Putin, the region also has significant strategic and economic value. It\u2019s a resource-rich territory with coal and mineral deposits, as well as farmland, and coastline along the Sea of Azov. This helps explain, in part, why the Donbas has been such a focal point in the war.<\/p>\n Ukrainians often say that the war did not begin with Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion in 2022, but in 2014\u2014a time of immense political and social upheaval<\/a> for Ukraine. That year, Russia invaded and illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine and began backing pro-Kremlin militants in a conflict against Ukrainian forces in the Donbas.<\/p>\n Not long after Moscow\u2019s annexation of Crimea, which was condemned worldwide, pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas began seizing territory and declared breakaway republics: the \u201cDonetsk People\u2019s Republic\u201d and \u201cLuhansk People\u2019s Republic.\u201d<\/p>\n Fierce battles were fought between Ukrainian forces and the Kremlin-backed separatists early in the conflict. Cease-fire agreements, known as the Minsk accords, were signed in 2014 and 2015 that helped tamp down the fighting. But the agreements were never fully implemented, and the conflict continued with varying levels of intensity for eight years\u2014ultimately killing around 14,000 people.<\/p>\n The fighting that began in 2014 in the Donbas, which has seen around 1.5 million<\/a> people flee from the region in the time since, laid the groundwork for Russia\u2019s broader invasion eight years later. With the support of the Russian military<\/a>, separatists in the Donbas had already seized roughly one-third of the region by the time Putin ordered the start of the \u201cspecial military operation\u201d in February 2022.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the lead-up to the invasion, Putin formally recognized<\/a> the independence of the self-declared separatist republics in the Donbas as well as recognized<\/a> all of the rebels\u2019 territorial claims in the territory. At the time, then-U.S. President Joe Biden warned that Putin appeared to be \u201csetting up a rationale to take more territory by force.\u201d<\/p>\n When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, it did so with the goal of subjugating all of Ukraine. Western governments were extremely concerned that Ukrainian forces would be overwhelmed and warned that Kyiv could be conquered in a matter of days.<\/p>\n But the Ukrainian military put up a much stiffer resistance than expected, inflicting significant casualties on Russian forces. Russia failed to seize Kyiv and in its broader war aims more generally. After its early failures, Russia in March 2022 signaled<\/a> that it was shifting its attention to \u201cthe liberation of Donbas,\u201d calling it the \u201cmain goal\u201d of the war.<\/p>\n But after over a decade of fighting in the Donbas, first by Kremlin-backed separatists and then by the Russian military itself, Russia still does not fully occupy<\/a> the region. Russian forces currently control about 88 percent of the Donbas, occupying all but a sliver of Luhansk and roughly 70 percent of Donetsk. Ukraine still controls around 30 percent of Donetsk, and roughly 250,000 people live in those non-occupied parts of the oblast.<\/p>\n Experts widely agree that Russia doesn\u2019t have the capacity to rapidly conquer the rest of the Donbas and that doing so would cost tens of thousands of lives and likely take years<\/a>. Putin\u2019s insistence that Kyiv give up the remainder of the Donbas without a fight is considered one of many signs that he does not sincerely desire long-term peace\u2014despite Trump\u2019s relative optimism about the chances for an agreement<\/a> to end the war (though Trump has also conceded that Putin may not want to make a deal).<\/p>\n Putin is \u201cnot genuinely considering a peace agreement other than on terms that has Ukraine capitulating,\u201d Taylor said. The Russian leader launched the full-scale invasion in 2022 as an \u201call-out attempt to dominate Ukraine\u201d and eliminate it as a sovereign nation, Taylor said. \u201cI am convinced that\u2019s still his goal.\u201d<\/p>\n Russian forces occupy roughly one-fifth of Ukraine, but they continue to struggle to make more than incremental gains on the battlefield. Russia has \u201cnot made big progress\u201d in capturing Ukrainian-held territory in the Donbas over the past year or so, Taylor said, pointing to the Russian military\u2019s failed efforts to seize the eastern city of Pokrovsk as a prime example.<\/p>\n Several major cities in western Donetsk that are still held by Ukraine\u2014Kramatorsk, Sloviansk, Kostyantynivka, and Druzhkivka\u2014are also considered to be important parts of Kyiv\u2019s \u201cfortress belt\u201d and crucial to its ability to defend the rest of the country.<\/p>\n \u201cUkraine has spent the last 11 years pouring time, money, and effort into reinforcing the fortress belt and establishing significant defense industrial and defensive infrastructure in and around these cities,\u201d the Institute for the Study of War, which has closely tracked the conflict in Ukraine for years, said in a recent report<\/a>.<\/p>\n Along these lines, Taylor said it would be \u201cunthinkable\u201d for Ukraine to \u201cvoluntarily\u201d give up the \u201cstrategic high ground\u201d in the Donbas and relinquish control of these fortress cities, and it\u2019s \u201cnonsense\u201d for Putin to \u201cdemand or even propose\u201d such a scenario.<\/p>\n But while Ukraine doesn\u2019t want to give up the land it still holds in the Donbas, the unfortunate reality for Kyiv is that it\u2019s also extremely unlikely to regain control of Russian-occupied territory in Donetsk or Luhansk.<\/p>\n As things currently stand, and with Trump continuing to push for a deal to end the war, this could mean that Ukraine may have to offer de facto recognition of Russia\u2019s control of territory in the Donbas\u2014and other parts of the country\u2014to get an agreement across the finish line.<\/p>\n But even if that happens, it could only be a matter of time before Putin restarts the war. Meanwhile, Russia is still aggressively pushing for more territory in Ukraine. This is why there are growing calls among Ukraine\u2019s supporters for Trump to strengthen Kyiv\u2019s negotiating position by significantly ramping up pressure on Moscow with increased military support for Ukraine and harsh economic penalties for Russia.<\/p>\n The \u201cbest-case scenario\u201d moving forward is that Trump uses the economic, military, and political leverage he\u2019s got to \u201cconvince Putin that he can\u2019t win,\u201d Taylor said. Putin is \u201cjust going to stall and pound the Ukrainians until and unless Trump uses the leverage he\u2019s got,\u201d he warned.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\nA symbolic and strategically vital region<\/h3>\n
\nThe heart of the war<\/h3>\n
\nUkraine\u2019s fortress belt<\/h3>\n