At last week’s Alaska summit, Vladimir Putin made full control of Donbas – Ukraine’s industrial heartland in the east – a central condition for ending the war.
According to sources briefed on the talks, the Russian leader demanded that Ukrainian forces withdraw from Donetsk and Luhansk, the two regions that make up Donbas, in exchange for a freeze along the rest of the frontline.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has consistently rejected giving up any territory under Kyiv’s control, making Donbas one of the defining faultlines of the peace talks. The idea is also deeply unpopular at home: about 75% of Ukrainians oppose formally ceding any land to Russia, according to polling by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
Putin’s drive to dominate the region dates back to 2014 when Moscow armed and financed separatist proxies and sent covert troops across the border. That campaign escalated into the full-scale invasion of 2022, when Russian forces seized much of the region outright.
Today, Russia holds about 17980 square miles (46,570 sq km), or roughly 88%, of Donbas, including the entirety of Luhansk and about three-quarters of Donetsk.
Ukraine continues to hold several key cities and fortified positions in the Donetsk region, defended at the cost of tens of thousands of lives. More than 250,000 civilians remain in the parts of the region still under Ukrainian control.
Where is Donbas and why does Putin want it?
Short for Donets Basin, Donbas is an industrial heartland in eastern Ukraine rich in coal and heavy industry. It has long been one of Ukraine’s most Russian-speaking regions, shaped by waves of Russian migration during the Soviet industrial drive that turned its coalmines and steel plants into the engine of the USSR.
Its political loyalties often leaned eastwards: Viktor Yanukovych, the Kremlin-backed president ousted in 2014, was born in Donetsk and built his power base there.
Donbas was thrust into conflict in 2014 after Yanukovych was toppled by mass protests and fled the country. In the aftermath, Moscow seized Crimea and unrest spread across eastern Ukraine. Armed groups backed by Russian weapons and fighters declared the creation of self-proclaimed “people’s republics” in Donetsk and Luhansk.
The separatist war fuelled resentment toward Moscow in Ukraine-held parts of Donbas. In Ukraine’s 2019 presidential election, voters there backed Zelenskyy by a wide margin. A Russian speaker himself, Zelenskyy campaigned on ending the conflict while safeguarding Ukraine’s sovereignty.
From the outset of the invasion in February 2022, Putin cast the protection of Donbas residents as a central justification for launching what he termed his “special military operation”. In a televised address, he said the self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk had appealed to Moscow for help, and he repeated unfounded claims that Russian-speaking residents were facing “genocide” at the hands of Kyiv.
In reality, Donbas served as a pretext: within hours, Russian forces advanced far beyond the region, driving on Kyiv in an attempt to overthrow Zelenskyy’s government and seize control of the entire country.
How does the average Russian view Donbas?
For years, Russian state media tried to cultivate sympathy for Donbas, portraying Ukraine as discriminating against its Russian-speaking population, but it never truly struck a chord with the wider public.
Unlike Crimea, which carried deep historical and emotional resonance for many Russians, Donbas remained a more distant and industrial region with little symbolic weight.
On the eve of the full-scale invasion, independent polls showed that only about a quarter of Russians supported the idea of incorporating Donetsk and Luhansk into Russia.
Since the invasion, however, the narrative has shifted: surveys indicate that a majority of Russians accept and support Putin’s stated aim of “protecting” the population of Donbas, and a majority back the annexation of the territories.
Will Putin’s ambitions end with Donbas?
Putin reportedly told Donald Trump in Alaska that in exchange for Donetsk and Luhansk, he would halt further advances and freeze the frontline in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where Russian forces occupy significant areas.
In public, Putin has repeatedly said Russia is seeking full control of the four regions it claimed to have annexed in autumn 2022, including Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. He has also spoken of establishing so-called “buffer zones” inside Ukraine’s Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiv regions.
“Putin has acted opportunistically; when he launched the invasion he had no fixed territorial limits in mind,” said a former high ranking Kremlin official. “His appetite grows once he’s tasted success.”
Military analysts doubt whether Russia has the economic or military capacity to push much beyond Donbas and say the conflict could instead drag on for years as a grinding war of attrition in Ukraine.
Ukraine has warned that conceding Donbas, with its string of fortified cities such as Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, would hand Russia a launchpad for deeper advances into central Ukraine.
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