What the new Ukraine could look like: How war-torn country could be carved up with Russia demanding the entire Donbas, US offering NATO-style security and front lines ‘frozen’

Volodymyr Zelensky will meet Donald Trump on Monday for crunch talks on the war in Ukraine in the wake of the U.S. president’s historic summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska last week.

Trump heralded ‘great progress’ with his Russian counterpart as they emerged from their face-to-face meeting on Friday, but the exact details of what was said has remained closely guarded ahead of Monday’s meeting in Washington.

Sources familiar with the talks said that Putin demanded Ukraine withdraw from Donetsk and Luhansk, industrial oblasts straddling the Donbas region. Russia would then agree to freeze battle lines as they lay. Zelensky was said to have rejected the demands.

As the Russian advance continues, Putin’s designs on Ukraine have hardened, not relaxed. Trump on Sunday shrugged that Zelensky should also accept Russia’s illegal 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Zelensky maintains that Ukraine cannot concede land without amending its constitution via referendum, and urges that any ceasefire must be premised on security guarantees from allies – citing dozens of historical breaches by Russia.

Flanked by European leaders, Zelensky arrives in Washington hoping to clarify the scope of Western security guarantees – an enduring question mark over Ukraine’s sovereignty that has enabled invasion and occupation since its independence.

The U.S. – and, now, Russia – seem more open to leaving Washington with the responsibility of keeping the peace. But the form of those promises remains unclear. 

Monday marks Zelensky’s first visit in six months, when he was hounded out of the Oval Office after a heated exchange with Donald Trump before the world’s press. The Ukrainian leader has deftly improved his relationship with Trump in recent months, but will have a careful line to walk in pushing back on Putin’s demands.

Ukraine’s bid for security

Ukraine’s core demands remain unchanged. Kyiv has living memory of Moscow reneging on agreements to respect Ukrainian sovereignty, and as such seeks tangible security guarantees from allies. It is also wary of giving up its ‘fortress cities’ in the east which double as industrial zones important to the economy.

Zelensky has warned Trump of Russia’s track record. But he has also been careful to show Ukraine’s efforts to work towards peace in good faith since the disastrous summit in February. Trump and Zelensky have met and talked in Europe since, and the relationship – at least publicly – appears stronger heading into today’s meeting than it did six months ago.

Chiefly, any deal will rely on meaningful and tangible security guarantees. Were Ukraine to lose its cities in the east, Russia would have a much stronger position from which to reopen the conflict. Ukrainian intelligence has warned that Putin could be looking to attack wider Europe within a matter of year – an assessment shared by several agencies on the continent.

‘We will not leave Donbas. We cannot do this,’ Zelensky said. ‘Donbas for the Russians is a springboard for a future new offensive. If we leave Donbas of our own free will or if we are pressured, we will open a third war.’

‘The surrender of the rest of Donetsk Oblast … would force Ukraine to abandon its “fortress belt,” the main fortified defensive line in Donetsk Oblast since 2014, with no guarantee that fighting will not resume,’ the Institute for the Study of War assessed ahead of the Alaska summit.

The industrial heartland of the Donbas, crossing the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, is today 70 per cent Russian-held. Giving up the remainder of western Donetsk oblast would bring Russian forces 51 miles further west into Ukraine.

A minerals deal agreed in February was hoped to provide some security assurances; Ukraine would offer the U.S. joint investment in its natural resources to ‘pay back’ aid given throughout the conflict. It was hoped a direct U.S. stake in Ukraine’s future would incentivise its protection. But most of Ukraine’s rare minerals are located in the Luhansk, Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts.

Zelensky has also consistently said he cannot concede territory without changes to Ukraine’s constitution, and Kyiv sees Donetsk’s ‘fortress cities’ such as Sloviansk and Kramatorsk as a bulwark against Russian advances into even more regions. 

In any case, a palatable ceasefire for Ukraine would depend on tangible security guarantees. 

NATO membership would offer the protections of Article 5 – an attack on one member is to be treated as an attack on all, and members would be bound to come to Ukraine’s aid in the event of a renewed offensive. Russia would see this as an aggressive advance towards its borders, and Donald Trump has ruled out Ukraine’s accession. 

Quietly, a number of other NATO allies have expressed concern about Ukraine joining the bloc.

At present, the only security guarantee Ukraine has is the continued support of European nations providing aid. Besides materiel aid, Ukraine’s allies have provided training and intelligence.

Europe has offered a possible workaround in the form of peacekeeping missions. Keir Starmer said in March that Britain and a ‘significant number’ of countries were prepared to put boots on the ground to help guarantee a lasting ceasefire in the event of a deal being reached. The ‘Coalition of the Willing’, led by Starmer, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Friedrich Merz, has pressed Trump for more guarantees that would act as a backstop for any peacekeeping arrangement.

The U.S. has not expressed much enthusiasm for the proposals so far. In February, Trump’s Defence Secretary said that U.S. forces would not be part of a future peacekeeping mission in Ukraine. British government sources said at the time the U.S. could still offer air cover, if not a physical presence on the ground.

Russia has not embraced the idea. Without a UN mandate, peacekeepers in Ukraine would be considered ‘legitimate targets’, Moscow’s Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya told RIA in February. In March, Putin’s foreign minister said sending European peacekeepers to Ukraine would be considered an act of war.

The U.S. is now said to be preparing to offer its own security guarantees to help usher a peace deal through. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, said on Sunday that the U.S. could offer ‘Article 5-like protection’ to Ukraine, adding that Russia was open to the idea.

‘We were able to win the following concession, that the United States could offer Article 5-like protection,’ Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to Russia, told CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ program. ‘The United States could offer Article 5 protection, which was the first time we had ever heard the Russians agree to that.’

Again, the devil lies in the detail. Zelensky hopes that he and his European allies can press Trump to clarify what Ukraine can expect today. Any guarantees, Zelensky wrote on X, ‘must really be very practical, delivering protection on land, in the air and at sea, and must be developed with Europe’s participation’.

Ukraine’s apprehensions are well founded. In 1994, the U.S., Russia and Ukraine agreed a deal by which Ukraine would give up its strategic nuclear weapons. In return, its independence would be respected by Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom. The U.S. and Britain were prepared to provide Ukraine with security assurances but not military ‘guarantees’.

Thirty years later, the optimism of the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances has dissipated entirely. The core questions of security and Ukrainian concessions remain. Ukraine seeks tangible, proven and legally binding security guarantees that there will be no repeat of 2022, or 2014.

Security will also depend on Ukraine’s ability to rebuild. The war has cost Kyiv hundreds of billions of dollars and decimated the military-age population. Many refugees have fled the country and a post-war economy will struggle without support. Ukraine’s allies have urged that Russia must pay ‘approximately €500 billion in damages caused’ or forfeit the frozen assets held in Europe.

Ukraine also has more immediate demands from Russia that will factor into its deliberations. It has dismissed Moscow’s demands that it cut back its 900,000-strong active military and stop receiving weapons from allies. For families, too, there is the pressing requirement that children and prisoners taken during the conflict be returned to their homes.

The war – the deadliest in Europe for 80 years – has killed or wounded well over a million people from both sides, including thousands of mostly Ukrainian civilians, according to analysts. 

Russia’s bid for land

Donald Trump went into talks with Putin in Alaska on Friday asserting a 25 per cent chance of failure. The terms for success and failure were not entirely clear. 

The U.S. president had prefaced the meeting saying he wanted a quick ceasefire, threatening Russia with ‘severe consequences’ – sanctions – if Putin did not agree to end the war on Friday. When they emerged, they took no questions. Trump said there was ‘great progress’, but acknowledged barriers to peace. There was no mention of sanctions.

Afterwards, Trump said he had agreed with Putin that negotiators should go straight to a peace settlement and not via a ceasefire as Ukraine and its European allies had been demanding – previously with U.S. support.

‘The U.S. president’s position has changed after talks with Putin, and now the discussion will focus not on a truce, but on the end of the war. And a new world order. Just as Moscow wanted,’ Olga Skabeyeva, one of Russian state TV’s most prominent talkshow hosts, said on Telegram.

Publicly, Putin’s key demands remained unchanged. After the summit, Putin spoke of the urgency of removing what he called the ‘root causes’ of the war – a term that has come to reflect maximalist designs on Ukraine and its demilitarisation. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, set the tone when he arrived in Alaska wearing a shirt emblazoned with CCCP [USSR].

Russia’s war goals have included recognition of sovereignty over the Ukrainian regions of Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. During the summit, Putin reportedly told Trump that he wants to keep Donetsk and Luhansk, and would freeze battle-lines as they lay in the other regions so long as key demands were met. Still, Russia occupies large swathes of Kherson and Zaphorizhzhia. 

Russia would also be prepared to return comparatively small tracts of Ukrainian land it has occupied in the northern Sumy and northeastern Kharkiv regions, sources with knowledge of Putin’s proposals said.

Today, Russia controls nearly 114,500 square km (44,600 square miles), or 19%, of Ukraine, including Crimea. ISW analysts assess that Russia would be unable to seize the remainder of Donetsk rapidly through force, ‘as Russian forces have failed to do for over a decade’. Russia could ‘only’ seize all of the oblast if Ukraine withdraws.

Although the Americans have not spelled this out, the sources said they knew Russia’s leader was also seeking – at the very least – formal recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea.

Russia would also demand official status for the Russian language inside parts of, or across, Ukraine, as well as the right of the Russian Orthodox Church to operate freely, the sources said. 

Trump said in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity after the summit that he and Putin had discussed land transfers and security guarantees for Ukraine, and had ‘largely agreed’.

‘I think we’re pretty close to a deal,’ he said, adding: ‘Ukraine has to agree to it. Maybe they’ll say “no”.’

Marco Rubio, the U.S. Secretary of State, expressed some empathy towards the Ukrainian position, while acknowledging that neither side would be able to get everything they sought.

‘[The Ukrainians] don’t want to be back here again. They want to be able to go on to rebuild their country and live their lives,’ he said.

‘That’s a very reasonable request. That’s something we’re working on. And that’s something the Russian side has to understand, obviously.

‘Ukraine has a right, like every sovereign country, to enter into security alliances and agreements with other countries.’

Sources with knowledge of the Alaska summit, however, said Ukraine would be barred from joining the military alliance under Putin’s terms. Joining the Atlantic alliance is a strategic objective for Kyiv that is enshrined in the country’s constitution.

It is not clear Russia has demonstrated willingness to make key concessions. 

In a separate interview on ABC, Rubio said if a deal could not be reached to end the war, existing U.S. sanctions on Russia would continue, and more could be added. Von der Leyen announced on Sunday that a 19th package of sanctions against Russia was set to be unveiled in early September.

Trump’s bid for peace at any cost

Donald Trump said dozens of times that he could end the war in one day while on the campaign trail last year. He later said he meant it ‘figuratively’.

Trump is now lobbying for a Nobel Peace Prize, citing the various conflict that have ended since January with his involvement in mediating peace talks.

Yesterday, piling pressure on to Zelensky to make a deal, he shifted the burden of responsibility back onto Ukraine.

Zelensky could choose to end the conflict ‘almost immediately, if he wants to’, he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Ukrainians are weary of war. But they are unlikely to favour making a deal with Russia for its own sake. Europe, likewise, realises that neither it nor Ukraine can again agree terms that only stave off Russian aggression in the short term.

Any deal that lets off an invading force lightly would also set a dangerous precedent for global security, upending the fragile peace of Pax Americana.

The difference between Russia and Ukraine’s key demands will become apparent in the days that follow. Europe has given its backing to Trump’s proposal for a trilateral summit with Putin and Zelensky after talks in the Middle East earlier this year failed to yield definitive progress.

Russia continues to advance into Ukraine, and it is clear that the war cannot go on forever. But Ukraine cannot afford a ceasefire that weakens its position and leaves it susceptible to a future reopening of the conflict.

So long as Russia feels the ‘root causes’ have not been addressed, that threat will always linger over Ukraine. But Ukraine knows from centuries of conflict and occupation that Russia’s designs may not end with the terms it says it will agree to.