Report: Putin Wants Eastern Ukraine in Deal to Stop War

President Trump says he's set to meet with Vladimir Putin on Friday in Alaska, with plans to discuss ending Russia's invasion of Ukraine, though the Russian leader seems to already have his asks in mind. The Wall Street Journal reports that Putin delivered a proposal this week to the Trump administration that laid out his conditions for a ceasefire in Ukraine, including "major territorial concessions" by Ukraine, according to Ukrainian and European officials. Those concessions would include Ukraine delivering the eastern region of the Donbas to the Kremlin, while Russia would simply agree to stop the fighting but little else.

Putin's plan includes having Ukraine withdraw its troops from the Donetsk region, with Russia taking over that area and Luhansk, and making Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014, a sovereign Russian territory. Although Russia currently controls much of Donetsk and Luhansk, Ukraine still controls some "sizable chunks" of territory there, including important cities. The proposal was said to have been offered by Putin on Wednesday to US special envoy Steve Witkoff. Officials in Ukraine and Europe, meanwhile, fear Putin is simply offering this plan as a stall tactic to avoid more US sanctions and tariffs, with no guarantees he wouldn't pick up on the war where he left off at any given time.

The Russian leader's previous demands included Russian control of all Ukrainian regions along the front line, which stretches beyond the Donbas. Per the AP and Washington Post, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky has responded to the planned Trump-Putin meeting and the prospect of Ukraine ceding land to Russia, in a language Putin can understand: Nyet. "Any decisions that are without Ukraine, are at the same time decisions against peace," Zelensky wrote Saturday on social media. "They will not achieve anything." As for a possible land grab, he noted: "We will not reward Russia for what it has perpetrated. ... This war must be brought to an end—and Russia must end it. ... [but] Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupier."