How US-Russia peace plan would carve up Ukraine’s territory

Russia’s war in Ukraine continues, despite US President Donald Trump’s promise to end the conflict within 24 hours of his return to office in January. Should Mr Trump succeed in brokering a peace deal, the agreement will have to address the future of Ukraine’s occupied territory.

Under a new proposal negotiated between US and Russian officials and presented to Ukraine, Crimea and much of the Donbas region – including parts Moscow hasn’t been able to take militarily – would be recognised as de facto Russian.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his European allies have been pushing to secure changes to the 28-point peace plan, which also stipulates his country cap the size of its military and abandon any hope of joining NATO.

While talks between the US and Ukraine resulted in “an updated and refined peace framework”, according to a joint statement, key sticking points, including on territory, remain.

Mr Trump initially floated a deadline of Nov 27 – Thanksgiving in the US – for Mr Zelensky to accept a deal, but he also suggested that an extension was possible.

What Ukrainian territory does Russia control?

As of mid-November, Russia occupied nearly a fifth of Ukraine, with its offensive stretching across a front line of more than 1,000km.

President Vladimir Putin has worked for years to revise Ukraine’s borders. He believes that Russia should extend beyond its current borders and has lamented that the collapse of the Soviet Union – which Ukraine was part of until the USSR’s dissolution in 1991 – was a “disintegration of historical Russia”.

Mr Putin illegally annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014. Parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces in the east of Ukraine – which together form the Donbas region – were under the control of Russia and its proxies from that year, as the Kremlin incited a separatist insurgency shortly after the operation to seize Crimea.

Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian troops have occupied much of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. They have captured parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces in southern Ukraine as well, including the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe.

Russian forces have never managed to fully control these four regions, even after years of trying. Nonetheless, Mr Putin announced their annexation in September 2022, declaring them to be “forever” part of Russia.

Under an amendment he introduced in 2020, the Russian Constitution bans the relinquishment of territory once it has been proclaimed to belong to Russia.

How would Ukraine’s borders change?

A copy of the initial proposal seen by Bloomberg states that Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions would be “recognised as de facto Russian, including by the United States”.

Ukraine would have to withdraw its forces from the parts of Donetsk that it currently controls, and that area would become a “neutral demilitarised buffer zone” internationally recognised as belonging to Russia. Under the terms of the agreement, the Russian military would not enter this zone.

Elsewhere, control over Kherson and Zaporizhzhia would be frozen along the line of contact between Russian and Ukrainian troops, translating to de facto recognition along this line. Russia would relinquish “other agreed territories” it controls outside these five regions.

How likely is Ukraine to concede these territories? 

The original peace plan says that the US would provide Ukraine with a security guarantee – and be compensated for doing so – to deter further Russian attempts to capture more territory. 

But Ukraine has been scarred by past promises. Under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Russia, the US and UK made security guarantees – pledging to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and refrain from the use of military force – in exchange for Kyiv giving up its Soviet nuclear weapons.

Russia breached those commitments 20 years later with its annexation of Crimea.

Mr Zelensky and his European allies are pressing for discussions on any territorial swops to take place only once the war ceases at the current front line.

If Ukraine were to surrender the entirety of the Donetsk province, it would withdraw to a position that would be largely indefensible in the event of renewed Russian aggression, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think-tank.

The think-tank says that Ukraine’s “fortress belt” – the main fortified defensive line that has for years staved off Russian advances deeper into the country – would be vulnerable to being seized by Mr Putin’s forces if left undefended in a demilitarised buffer zone.

Mr Zelensky has previously repeated that Kyiv will never recognise its occupied territories as Russian. He has pointed to the Ukrainian Constitution, adopted in 1996, which says that the country’s territory is “indivisible and inviolable”.

The document also specifically defines Crimea as an autonomous republic that is an “inseparable constituent part of Ukraine”.

The majority of Ukrainians are against relinquishing any territory, although the level of support for this position has softened as the fighting has dragged on.

In May 2022, some 82 per cent of Ukrainians said they should not give up any of their territory, even if this prolongs the war and threatens the country’s independence, according to a poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. By early October 2025, that share had fallen to 54 per cent.

Does Zelensky have a choice?

European leaders, joined by Group of Seven members Canada and Japan, have rallied around Mr Zelensky, reiterating that international borders must not be changed by force. They have called the 28-point plan a “basis which will require additional work”.

There may have been some movement following talks between US and Ukrainian officials in Geneva on Nov 23. The two sides made “meaningful progress towards aligning positions”, according to a joint statement. 

Nonetheless, Mr Zelensky may come under pressure to accept suboptimal terms and end the war. He has been weakened domestically by a corruption scandal that has ensnared senior officials. Ukrainians are also enduring rolling blackouts and relentless Russian air strikes aimed at breaking their morale ahead of winter. 

Externally, the Trump administration threatened to withhold its supply of weapons and stop intelligence-sharing that has been crucial for Ukraine’s air defence, unless Mr Zelensky accepted a deal, Bloomberg reported.

Meanwhile, the prospects for critical financial aid from the European Union to help sustain Ukraine’s war effort are in doubt. The bloc is grappling with divisions over the use of frozen Russian assets to provide €140 billion (S$210 billion) in loans.

What is Putin’s interest in the Donbas region?

Named after the Donets Coal Basin, the Donbas has historically been Ukraine’s coal mining and steelmaking heartland, and before then, an industrial bastion in the Soviet Union.

Industrial activity in the Donbas has been disrupted by persistent, bloody fighting since 2014, and many facilities were destroyed by the subsequent full-blown war. Still, the area has significant reserves of coal that Russia could exploit.

Ukraine had the world’s eighth-largest coal reserves in 2023, according to the US Energy Information Administration, and most of its coal is in the Donbas region.

Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, including the Donbas, have other natural resources, such as lithium, titanium and graphite – although it is unclear how much of these materials can be commercially extracted.

There is a shale gas deposit in the Donetsk region, which Shell signed a deal to jointly tap with a state-owned Ukrainian company in 2013 before later pulling out of the agreement.

Recognising the country’s minerals potential, the Trump administration signed a deal with Mr Zelensky’s government in 2025 that grants the US privileged access to the future extraction of Ukraine’s natural resources and a share of the profits.

The Donetsk region also has strategic military value. The city of Mariupol is located in the south of the oblast, and Russian control has enabled Mr Putin to establish a land corridor from the Russian border along the coast of the Sea of Azov to Crimea.

Why does Putin want to retain control of Crimea?

Crimea has historical significance for Russia. Previously controlled by the Ottoman Empire, it was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1783 during the reign of Catherine the Great. 

The peninsula remained part of Russia until 1954, when Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev handed the territory to Ukraine, which was then still part of the USSR. At that time, Crimea was lying in ruins in the wake of World War II.

Earlier Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had deported Crimea’s indigenous Tatar population after accusing them of collaborating with the Nazis in World War II and encouraged Russians to move to the peninsula.

That resulted in the majority of people in Crimea being ethnic Russians. When Mr Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, he justified the decision as coming to the aid of the Russian-speaking people living there, even though they were citizens of Ukraine.

The location of the diamond-shaped peninsula makes it strategically important for trade and projecting military power. Crimea is key to controlling shipping activity in the Black Sea, a critical corridor for transporting grain and other goods.

Meanwhile, the harbour of Sevastopol has historically been home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. It is a deep warm-water port and is situated close to two NATO members: Romania and Turkey. Ukraine leased the naval base to Russia after becoming independent in 1991.

Mr Putin’s seizure of Crimea enabled him to use it as a launchpad for the large-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Kerch Bridge, which opened in 2018 to connect Crimea to the Russian mainland, has served as a vital logistics route for Russia to supply its front lines. Ukrainian forces have mounted several attacks to try to sever this link. Bloomberg