Russian President Vladimir Putin and United States President Donald Trump will meet on Friday in Alaska to debate ending Moscow’s three-year-long conflict in Ukraine.
The leaders are anticipated to debate “land swapping”, suggesting that Trump might help an settlement the place Russia will keep management of among the Ukrainian territory it presently occupies, however not all.
In a information convention on the White Home on Tuesday, Trump stated, “Russia’s occupied a giant portion of Ukraine. They occupied prime territory. We’re going to attempt to get a few of that territory again for Ukraine.”
However the thought of a swap additionally means that Ukraine would possibly want to surrender some land that it presently controls.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly stated that any deal involving the ceding of Ukrainian land to Russia can be unsuccessful.
What does Putin need?
Final month, Trump warned that more durable sanctions can be put in place until Russia halted preventing with Ukraine inside 50 days. That deadline has now handed, and no new measures have hit Moscow, however the US has imposed 50 p.c tariffs on India to punish it for its continued buy of Russian oil.
Trump has demanded that Putin conform to a ceasefire on Friday to keep away from the US imposing additional tariffs on different nations shopping for Russian vitality property.
Putin has acknowledged that he needs full management of Ukraine’s japanese areas, together with Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, components of which Russia annexed in 2022, together with Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.
If Kyiv had been to agree, it could imply withdrawing troops from components of Luhansk and Donetsk, the place a lot of the current preventing has been concentrated.
Bloomberg reported on August 8 that US and Russian officers had been working in the direction of an settlement that might “freeze the conflict”, and permit Moscow to maintain the territory it has taken.
As well as, Putin has persistently demanded that Ukraine stay a impartial state, abandoning its ambitions to hitch NATO.
Can Ukraine even cede territory?
Ukraine giving up land it has misplaced throughout this conflict and beforehand, in 2014, isn’t a welcome choice.
On Saturday, Zelenskyy stated that he wouldn’t “reward” land to Russia, and that Ukrainians wouldn’t surrender their land to Russian occupiers.
Greater than this, ceding any territory can be unlawful underneath the Ukrainian structure.
How a lot of Ukraine does Russia management?
Russia occupies about one-fifth – 114,500 sq. km (44,600 sq. miles) – of Ukraine’s land.
The energetic entrance line stretches some 1,000km (620 miles) by means of the areas of Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson.
Russia controls about three-quarters of the Zaporizhia and Kherson areas.
Moreover, small components of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk areas of Ukraine are underneath Russian occupation. Throughout the Sumy and Kharkiv areas, Russia controls about 400 sq km (154 sq miles) of territory. In Dnipropetrovsk, Russia has taken a tiny space close to the border.
Russia controls about 46,570 sq km (17,981 sq miles), or 88 p.c, of the territory often known as Donbas, made up of the Luhansk and Donbas areas. Russia occupies virtually all of Luhansk and three-quarters of Donetsk.
Ukraine nonetheless holds about 6,600 sq km (2,550 sq miles) of Donbas, though Russia has been focusing most of its vitality alongside the entrance in Donetsk, pushing in the direction of the final remaining main cities not in its management.
This has been a part of its efforts to safe what is named the “fortress belt”.
What’s the fortress belt?
The “fortress belt” stretches some 50km (31 miles) alongside a strategic freeway between the cities of Kostiantynivka and Sloviansk.
The fortress belt contains key cities — Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, Oleksiyevo-Druzhkivka and Kostiantynivka – which have remained underneath the management of Ukrainian troops since 2014 and are of serious strategic significance as logistical and administrative centre.
Makes an attempt by Russian troops to seize Sloviansk and the cities of the fortress belt in 2022-2023 had been unsuccessful, and Ukrainian counteroffensives drove the Russian forces removed from key positions.
“Ukraine’s fortress belt has served as a serious impediment to the Kremlin’s territorial ambitions in Ukraine over the past 11 years,” the Washington, DC-based suppose tank Institute for the Research of Battle (ISW) reported on August 8.
Russian advances: What’s the state of affairs on the bottom now?
In August, Russian forces made vital beneficial properties, advancing about 10km (6 miles) past the entrance traces as they intensified efforts to grab the fortress belt from the southwest, concentrating forces within the Toretsk and japanese Pokrovsk instructions.
Al Jazeera navy skilled Alex Gatapoulous stated, “I’m undecided what Ukraine has to supply by way of territory. Russia has all of it and is slowly profitable this battle, albeit at a terrific price.
“There may be already motion round Pokrovsk within the east, and Konstantinivka can be at risk of encirclement. If Ukraine hasn’t constructed defensive positions in-depth, Russian forces could have the flexibility to interrupt out into open nation. It is a actually harmful time for Ukraine. They’ve misplaced all of the Russian territory they’d taken in Kursk and have little to commerce with.”
How has the conflict progressed over the previous three years?
Within the conflict’s early weeks, Russia superior from the north, east and south, quickly seizing huge areas of Ukrainian territory, with fierce battles in Irpin, Bucha and Mariupol – the latter of which fell to Russian forces in Could 2022. The siege of Mariupol was one of many deadliest and most damaging battles of the conflict. Ukrainian officers estimated tens of hundreds of civilian deaths.
By March 2022, Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Energy Plant, the biggest in Europe, and by April of that 12 months, Russia managed 27 p.c of Ukraine.
By late 2022, Ukraine had turned the tide with main counteroffensives in Kharkiv and Kherson, with Kyiv reclaiming 54 p.c of the land Russia had captured because the starting of the conflict, in keeping with ISW knowledge, lowering Russian-occupied land to only 18 p.c of the nation.
In August 2024, Ukraine launched a major incursion into Russia’s Kursk area, marking a notable escalation within the battle. This offensive noticed Ukrainian forces advancing roughly 10km (6 miles) into Russian territory, seizing management over an estimated 250 sq km (96.5 sq miles), all of which has since been retaken by Russia.
By late 2024 and into 2025, the conflict had settled right into a grinding deadlock, with either side struggling heavy losses. Nonetheless, Russia’s current incursions, pushing in the direction of Sloviansk, allude to the potential for an additional offensive to take land it has traditionally struggled to seize.
What was the pre-war state of affairs?
Previous to Russia’s full-scale 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia had held Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Moscow additionally supported separatists within the Donbas area, resulting in the creation of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk Individuals’s Republics. Russia formally recognised these entities on February 21, 2022, and launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine three days later.
The conflict in Ukraine has resulted in one of many largest and fastest-growing displacement crises in Europe since World Battle II. In accordance with the UN, roughly 10 million Ukrainians have been displaced, which is about 21 p.c of the nation’s pre-war inhabitants.
Of those, 3.7 million stay internally displaced inside Ukraine, whereas 6.9 million have fled overseas as refugees.
