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an important area of ukraine became the center of heated debate between Volodymyr Zelensky And donald trump According to reports, during a White House meeting.
Vladimir Putin has long demanded that Ukraine hand over Donbass to Moscow, a part of eastern Ukraine, much of which has been occupied by Russian forces since a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Washington DC on Friday In an explosive meeting, It is said about the American President Zelensky asked to accept Russiaconditions or risk facing destruction.
President Zelensky’s visit to the Oval Office reportedly turned into a “shouting match”, with Trump resorting to foul language, sources said. financial Times.
Trump reportedly shuffled Ukrainian border line maps, urging Zelensky to hand over the Donbass region to Russia, seemingly adopting the points Vladimir Putin A call was made to Trump a day earlier.
But it was reported that Zelensky was successful in getting Trump to back down to support a halt to the existing front line.
Where is Donbass region?
The Donbass region is composed primarily of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine. The areas which have been occupied on a large scale since February 2022.
But a small portion of the territory bordering Russia was captured in 2014, when Russia-backed separatists engaged in a war with Ukrainian government forces.
It was followed by demonstrations by pro-Russian and anti-government groups following the Euromaidan uprising, a wave of pro-Europe demonstrations, and civil unrest in Ukraine.
The region, also largely comprised of Russian-speaking people, has been a Soviet-era hotspot for migration as it was the industrial heartland of the USSR.
Russia occupies about 90% of Donbass
Any concession of large areas of Ukrainian territory would be a bitter pill for Kiev.
By August, Russia controlled about 88 percent of the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, almost all of Luhansk, and about 75 percent of Donetsk. It has since made modest gains in the Donetsk region.
Zelensky had previously insisted that he would reject any proposal to withdraw from the industrial Donbass region, claiming it would “open a door” to a broader Russian invasion.
But Trump said Ukraine’s Donbass region should be “cut off,” leaving much of it in Russian hands, to end the nearly four-year war.
“Let it be cut as it is,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One. “It’s chopped right now,” adding that you can “leave it as it is right now.”
“They can have some talks later,” he said. But for now, both sides of the conflict should “stop on the battle line – go home, stop fighting, stop killing people.
The US president reportedly told Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky in an explosive meeting in Washington DC on Friday to accept Russia’s terms or risk annihilation.
Putin first entered the Donbass region in 2014 during an offensive in which Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula.
Russian-backed separatists broke with the Ukrainian government to declare the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent “people’s republics”, and as a result, Moscow annexed more than a third of Ukraine’s eastern territory.
In recent months, Moscow has strengthened its efforts to seize these remaining areas, advancing towards cities such as Pokrovsk and intensifying drone and air strikes.
This is extremely important for Ukraine, given that the region has one of the largest coal reserves and is seen by Kiev as an energy powerhouse.
It has also been described by the Institute for War Studies as a “fortress belt”, noting that Donetsk forms the main fortified defensive line along the eastern sector, stopping Russia in their tracks.
“Ukraine maintains a significant defensive line in Donetsk,” says Elena Beketova, a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, describing what she describes as “a strong zone built up over the years since the war began 11 years ago.”
“It’s not just trenches,” explains Beketova, “it’s a deep, layered defense with bunkers, anti-tank trenches, mines and industrial areas built into the area. The area includes key heights, rivers and urban areas, which are extremely difficult to capture.”
Leaving the area would be “catastrophic” for Russia, especially if they are not given solid security guarantees such as Article 5 protection from NATO.
However, Putin made it clear that he would not back down from the main demands of “resolving the root causes of the conflict”, including making Ukraine a neutral state and abandoning Ukraine. nato Aspirations.