What Putin’s Donbass Transmission would mean to Ukraine

Days before he met with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, Donald Trump pointed to what he called a “swap on the ground” as a condition for peace.

For Ukrainians, it was a confusing turn of the phrase. What land had to be exchanged? Was Ukraine a part of Russia had to be offered in exchange for the land that Russia had taken by force?

As Volodimir Zelenski is preparing to travel to Washington on Monday to meet Trump, there is probably no element of “exchange” in the thinking of the US president.

Instead, he was reported to plan to press Zelenski to hand over the entire Eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in exchange for Russia, freezing the rest of the front line – a proposal presented by Putin in Alaska.

Luhansk is almost entirely under Russian control. But Ukraine is thought to have kept about 30% of Donetsk, including several key cities and fortifications, with a price of tens of thousands of Ukrainian life.

Both regions – known as Donbass – are rich in minerals and industry. To pass them on to Russia would now be a “tragedy,” said the Ukrainian historian Jaroslav Hgotak.

“This is Ukrainian territory,” said G -n Hgotak. “And the people in these regions – especially the miners – played a huge role in strengthening Ukrainian identity.”

The region has also created “famous politicians, poets and dissidents,” he said. “And now refugees who will not be able to return home if it becomes Russian.”

At least 1.5 million Ukrainians have fled Donbass as Russian aggression began in 2014. More than three million are thought to live under Russian occupation. Another 300,000 are expected to be in the parts where Ukraine still has control.

In areas closest to the front line, life is already a dangerous struggle. Andrius Borilo, a 55-year-old military chaplain in the poorly hit city of Peloviansk, said in a telephone interview that Shells had landed by his house over the weekend.

“It’s a very difficult situation here,” he said. “There is a sense of resignation and abandonment. I don’t know how much we have the power to endure. Someone has to protect us. But who?”

Borilo followed the news from Alaska, he said. “I put this to Trump, not Zelenski. But they accept everything from me and it’s betrayal.”

Zelenski constantly says that Ukraine will not convey Donbass in exchange for peace. And confidence in Russia to observe any such arrangement – not just to use the applied land for future attacks – is low.

Therefore, other reasons about 75% of Ukrainians object to any official termination of Earth in Russia, according to the survey of the International Institute of Sociology of Kiev.

But Ukraine is also deeply tired of the war. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed and wounded since the beginning of the large -scale invasion. People yearn end to suffering, especially in Donbass.

“You ask about the transfer of the Donetsk region, well, I measure this war not in miles, but in human life,” says Yeven Tkachov, a 56 -year -old, emergency rescuer in Donets Kramartk.

“I’m not ready to give tens of thousands of lives for a few thousand square kilometers,” he said. “Life is more important than territory.”

For some, this is in the end. Land against life. He leaves President Zelenski “at a crossroads without a good route in front of him,” said Volodimir Ariev, a Ukrainian MP from the opposition European Party for Solidarity.

“We do not have enough strength to continue the war for unlimited time,” Ariev said. “But if Zelenski would retreat this land, it would not only be the collapse of our constitution, it could have distinctive features of betrayal.”

However, in Ukraine it is not clear what mechanism such an agreement can even be reached. Any official transmission on the territory of the nation requires the approval of parliament and a referendum of the people.

It is more likely to be a factual transmission of control without official recognition of the territory as a Russian. But even in this case, the process is not well understood, said Ukrainian MP Ina Sauzun.

“There is no real understanding of what the procedure should be,” she said. “The president just signs the agreement? Should it be the government? Parliament? There is no legal procedure created because, you know, the writers of the Constitution did not think about it.”

Things can get more clear after Zelenski talks to Trump in Washington on Monday – the first visit to the Ukrainian leader to the White House after a catastrophic collision in the Oval cabinet in February. Against the background of the misery left by the Alaska summit, there was a possible glimmer of good news about Ukraine.

Trump seems to have canceled his position on security guarantees after the summit, suggesting that he is ready to join Europe by offering Ukraine military protection against future Russian attacks.

For Ukrainians, guaranteeing principal shows an absolutely vital part of any potential territory agreement or anything else.

“People in Ukraine will accept different forms of security guarantees,” says Anton Gruushki, Director of the International Institute of Sociology of Kiev, “But they require them.”

For Yuven Tkachov, the emergency worker in Kramask, the exchange of territory can only be considered by “real guarantees, not just written promises”.

“Only then, more or less, do I support the Donbass of Russia,” he said. “If the British Royal Fleet is located in the port of Odessa, then I agree.”

Since various paths to peace are swimming and discussing, sometimes in the style of deals, preferred by President Trump, there is a risk of losing the view, involved real people-people who have already lived in a decade of war and who can lose even more in the coming of peace.

Donbass was a place full of Ukrainians from all different spheres of life, said Vitalii Dribnytsia, a Ukrainian historian. “We are not just talking about culture, politics, demographic data, we are talking about people,” he said.

Donetsk may not have the cultural reputation of somewhere like Odessa, said Dr. Drinytsia. But it was Ukraine. “And every corner of Ukraine, whether it has any great cultural meaning or not, is Ukraine,” he said.