MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump met in Alaska and talked about the parameters for a peace settlement to stop the war in Ukraine. This is a big step forward in diplomacy. Three people who know how the Kremlin thinks say that Putin is telling Ukraine to do the following:
Take back all of the sections of the Donbas region that it still holds, which is about 12% of the territory.
Give up its objective of joining NATO and agree to stay a neutral, non-aligned country.
Stop any Western troops from going to Ukraine.
Accept legally binding promises from the U.S.-led military alliance that it will not move any further east.
Putin’s demands in June 2024 were for Ukraine to give up all four provinces that Russia claims to have annexed: Dontesk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. The proposal is a small step back from those demands. Russia would be willing to stop fighting on its present front lines in the southern provinces of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and even give up tiny areas of the Kharkiv, Sumy, and Dnipropetrovsk regions it holds if the new requirements are met.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said many times that giving up any land is “unacceptable” and would be like “surrender.” He has always said that the industrial Donbas region is a key defensive stronghold for the country’s survival. Joining NATO is also a strategic goal written into the country’s constitution, and Ukraine sees it as the best way to protect itself from potential Russian attacks.
Both presidents said good things about the meeting. Trump called the talks “very productive,” and Putin said they will ideally “open up the road to peace in Ukraine.” But neither leader gave any particular information. According to the sources, Moscow thinks the summit is the “best chance for peace” since the war started since Putin is “ready for compromise.”
But political analysts are still not sure. Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, told reporters that Ukraine’s need to leave the Donbas is a “non-starter” for Kyiv, both politically and strategically. He said that Russia’s commitment to “peace” on these terms might be “more of a performance for Trump than a sign of a true willingness to compromise.”
Neither the White House nor NATO have said anything about the alleged proposals yet. The two sides are still very far apart on important issues, and any possible peace accord would need major diplomatic breakthroughs and a major change in the way Kyiv and Moscow are bargaining.