The proposal to end the war in Ukraine, which emerged from the Alaska summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, focuses on trying to persuade Kiev to leave Donbas.

“Donbas, where the majority are Russian -speaking, is for Putin the core of the” deepest causes “of the war and its full occupation is at the top of its territorial and political claims.

The Russian president has attempted to control Donbas as early as 2014, initially through pro -Russian separatists and then by invading and attaching the area in 2022. Since then, the area has been the field of the most bloody battles of the war and remains the main goal of the summer Russian attack.

According to data from the Ukrainian Deepstate, Russian forces and allies have occupied about 87% of Donbas since 2014. With heavy losses, Russian forces are trying to occupy the 2,600 square miles of Donbas. Analysts warn that, without a truce, the conflict will continue next year, causing tens of thousands of deaths.

The fate of the area may determine the outcome of the whole war, the New York Times said in their analysis.

What does Putin give in return

The exact content of the peaceful proposal discussed by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin on Friday in Alaska remains unclear. The few details that have been made known come from the briefing made by Trump to European officials after the meeting.

According to two senior European officials who had been informed of the call, Putin demands the withdrawal of the Ukrainian forces from Donbas. In return, the conflict of the rest of the Ukrainian territory is freezing along the current lines of the front and to give a written assurance that it will not attack again.

Trump has called on Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski to accept the deal. “Russia is a very big power, and the Ukrainians are not,” he told Fox News after meeting Putin.

Volodimir Zelenski categorically rejected the possibility of concession that is not already under Russian occupation. “We will not give up Donbas. We can’t do this, “she told reporters last week. Zelenski is set to meet at the White House on Monday with US President Donald Trump.

Ukrainian authorities estimate that more than 200,000 civilians still live in the Donbas section that remains under the control of Kiev, mainly in the industrial complex around the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, which is highly densely populated and heavy fortified.

Why Putin requires Donbas

Since the invasion of 2022, Moscow attached four Ukrainian areas through referendums that were internationally denounced as a result of fraud – including Donetsk and Lugansk, which are Donbas. Of the four regions, Russia is fully controlled by Luhansk only.

The Russian forces have fought in the other eight Ukrainian areas since 2022, eventually leaving some and occupying small parts of others. Donbas, however, is at the heart of Vladimir Putin’s narrative, who cites the “historical unity” of Russian -speaking populations in the former Soviet Union.

Since 2014, Putin has presented the intervention as a “defense” of the pro -Russian separatists in the area, who fought Ukrainian forces with military and financial support from the Kremlin. This promise makes Donbas’s full control of a critical condition for the Russian president to claim to “completed his mission” to Ukraine, according to Constantine Remsukov, a publisher in Moscow with Kremlin ties.

Some Kremlin commentators, including Constantine Remzukov, estimate that Vladimir Putin may be willing to grant other occupied territories in order to ensure Donbas’ complete control.

“Donetsk is considered much more ‘ours’ than Dnipro, Sumi or Harcov,” said political scientist and former Kremlin adviser, Sergei Markov, referring to Ukrainian areas with a limited presence of Russian forces.

What does Putin base his claims

Donbas has been a field of conflict since the beginning of the 20th century, when Ukraine began to acquire state status. Nationalists, communists and Russian monarchs were then fought for the control of the industrial wealth of the region, in a chaotic period after the Bolsheviks’ revolution.

Until then, the population of the area was mainly Ukrainian. This changed with Joseph Stalin’s violent industrialization and terror campaigns, which led to the mass migration of Russian workers to Donbas’ coal mines and factories, the mass extermination of Ukrainian farmers and the suppression of the Ukrainian language.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, about two -thirds of the inhabitants of Donbas regarded Russian as their mother tongue, according to census data. The Russian cultural identity and language dominated even more in the first decades after Ukraine’s independence.

This political direction was clearly reflected in the polls, as in the 2010 presidential election, about 90% of voters in Donbas supported the pro -Candidate Victor Yanukovych. Yanukovych’s overthrow in 2014 by the demonstration movement in Kiev led Vladimir Putin to the annexation of Crimea and the organization of a rebellion in Donbas.

However, the pro -Russian uprising has sparked reactions. In the last 2019 presidential election, the Ukrainian controlled side of Donbas voted massively in favor of Volodimir Zelenski, a Russian -speaking candidate who promised peace without concession of Ukrainian sovereignty.

At the same time, Putin has fled to increasingly aggressive nationalism, attempting to mobilize public opinion in Russia after years of economic stagnation. The Kremlin’s propaganda machine tried to present Donbas as a “national affair”, a course that eventually led to the general invasion.

However, these efforts have found no widespread appeal in Russian society. An independent poll a few days before the invasion recorded that just a quarter of the Russians supported the accession of Donetsk and Luhank into the Russian Federation.

Will Putin stop at Donbas?

Although Vladimir Putin has occasionally hinted at the possibility of annexation of other Ukrainian territories, Ukrainian officials and many Western politicians and analysts estimate that the war will continue even after the occupation of Donbas, either by military means or through diplomacy.

Similar views are expressed by Russian nationalists and soldiers calling on Putin to continue businesses until the full occupation of the other two attached areas, Peninsa and Zaporizia. Other philosopher commentators argue that Moscow must continue until the overthrow of Volodimir Zelenski’s government and establish a more friendly power.

However, several independent analysts doubt whether Russia has the military and financial means to continue the attack beyond Donbas. The Russian economy is stagnant, state revenue is decreasing and the Kremlin will find it difficult to maintain current business intensity and next year, without significant deterioration in the standard of living of Russian citizens.

Putin’s authoritarian power and the worsening economic perspective may lead him to be enough, at least for the time being, to the full control of Donbas. “Russian society is in such a deplorable situation that it would be willing to accept almost any result of the war,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russian policy specialist in Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “We can imagine various degrees of dissatisfaction by some marginal sections of society, the ‘over -patriots’ and their likes, but the Kremlin can handle it.’