The territory at the heart of Russia’s war in Ukraine
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As of early August, Russia occupied nearly a fifth of Ukraine.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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MOSCOW - Russia’s war in Ukraine is well into its fourth year, despite US President Donald Trump’s promise to end the conflict within 24 hours of his return to office.
As his efforts to secure a peace deal continue, Mr Trump will have to bridge the stark differences between Mr Vladimir Putin and Mr Volodymyr Zelensky arising from the Russian president’s claims on Ukrainian territory.
While Mr Putin is demanding Ukraine cede land, Mr Zelensky and his European allies remain committed to the principle that international borders must not be changed by force.
What Ukrainian territory does Russia control?
As of early August, Russia occupied nearly a fifth of Ukraine, and its offensive stretched across a frontline of more than 1,000km.
Mr Putin’s attrition of Ukraine’s borders has been years in the making. He 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 pro-Russian 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, and captured parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces in the south of Ukraine as well. That gave them control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe.
Why does Putin want to retain control of Crimea?
Crimea has historical significance for Russia. 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 the Second World War, 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.
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 members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation: 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 frontlines. Ukrainian forces have mounted several attacks to try to sever this link.
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. Soviet propaganda used to refer to the region as “the Heart of Russia”.
Industrial activity in the region 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 also 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.
From a strategic perspective, if Ukraine were to hand over all of the Donetsk region as part of a peace deal, it would lose its “fortress belt”, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank. This is the main fortified defensive line that has for years staved off Russian advances deeper into the country.
The Donetsk region is also home to the city of Mariupol, 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, reducing reliance on the Kerch Bridge.
Beyond the Donbas, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia contain fertile farmland and have been an integral part of Ukraine’s agricultural output and its historical role as the “bread basket of Europe”. The two regions accounted for at least 10 per cent of average wheat, barley, rapeseed and sunflower seed production in Ukraine between 2016 and 2020, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
How likely is Putin to give up the Ukrainian territory Russia has seized?
Mr Putin has asserted that Russia has sovereignty over all of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, even as his forces have never managed to fully control these areas after a yearslong offensive.
He declared these four regions to be “forever” part of Russia after announcing that he was annexing them in September 2022.
Under an amendment Mr Putin introduced in 2020, the Russian Constitution bans the relinquishing of territory once it has been proclaimed as belonging to Russia.
A peace deal that recognises Russian sovereignty over these four provinces might not be enough to satisfy Mr Putin, who set out at the start of the invasion to take control of Kyiv, demilitarise Ukraine and force the country to abandon its ambition to join Nato
His maximalist position is rooted in his belief that Russia should extend beyond its current borders. Just two months before launching the full-scale assault on Ukraine in 2022, Mr Putin lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union as a “disintegration of historical Russia”.
He has also said that the Russian people were separated by the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 and claimed that 25 million of them were split across the independent states, the bulk of them in Ukraine. Mr Putin has repeatedly called Ukrainians and Russians “one people”.
What is Ukraine’s stance on its Russian-occupied territory?
Mr Zelensky has said repeatedly that Ukraine’s goal is to restore its borders to what they were when the country gained independence, including Crimea.
He has also reiterated that Ukraine will never recognise its occupied territories as Russian and will not agree to cede this land to seal a peace deal.
The president has pointed to Ukraine’s Constitution, which was adopted in 1996 and says that the country’s territory is “indivisible and inviolable”. It also specifically defines Crimea as an autonomous republic that is an “inseparable constituent part of Ukraine”.
Mr Zelensky’s refusal to relinquish any territory is a position shared by the majority of Ukrainians. But the level of support has softened as the fighting drags on, counter-offensives have stalled and casualties mount.
In May 2022, some 82 per cent of Ukrainians said they should not give up any of their territory, even if this makes the war last longer and threatens the country’s independence, according to a poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. By early June 2025, that share had fallen to 52 per cent.
In a KIIS survey across late July to early August, 54 per cent of Ukrainians supported a plan in which the frontline would be frozen but Ukraine would not formally recognize Russian sovereignty over the occupied territories, Ukraine would receive security guarantees from the US and Europe, and sanctions on Russia would be gradually lifted.
How is Trump approaching the demarcation of Ukrainian territory?
While Mr Trump has grown frustrated with Mr Putin in recent months over his refusal to cease hostilities in Ukraine, there is little indication this could result in a favourable outcome for Mr Zelensky, whose own relationship with the US leader has been volatile.
Bilateral talks between Mr Trump and Mr Putin risk Mr Zelensky being presented with a take-it-or-leave-it deal that entails the loss of Ukrainian territory. In early August, ahead of a planned meeting
The Trump administration previously floated the idea of the US recognising Russian control of Crimea as part of a peace agreement. Mr Putin’s illegal annexation of the peninsula has so far only been formally recognised by a few countries, including North Korea and Venezuela.
Mr Zelensky may yet be able to appeal to Mr Trump’s more transactional style to foreign policy to minimize any concessions.
The minerals deal signed in April gives the US a stake in the profits from Ukraine’s natural resources. This could potentially give Mr Trump an economic incentive to negotiate a settlement that brings more of the Russian-occupied areas back under Ukrainian control.
What is the position of Ukraine’s European allies?
European leaders have expressed a commitment to Ukraine’s territorial integrity, saying in a joint statement that “international borders must not be changed by force”.
However, Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte told ABC News in early August that the issue of territory would “have to be on the table” during negotiations, alongside security guarantees.
He suggested that the peace process could involve Ukraine acknowledging that it has lost control of some of its land without formally giving up sovereignty over those regions.
Mr Zelensky has said that any peace agreement must include security guarantees from Ukraine’s allies to prevent further Russian aggression.
As the US under Mr Trump pivots away from its historical role as a security guarantor, the concern for European leaders is that their peacekeepers could be left monitoring a truce that Mr Putin uses as an opportunity to rebuild his forces, mount another offensive and potentially project power further into the continent. BLOOMBERG
