Putin demands Donbas, NATO drop as Trump seeks Ukraine peace

Vladimir Putin is demanding that Ukraine cede full control of the eastern Donbas region, renounce NATO ambitions, remain neutral, and bar Western troops from its soil, three sources familiar with Kremlin thinking told Reuters.

The Russian president met with Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday for the first Russia-U.S. summit in more than four years.

Nearly the entire three-hour closed-door meeting focused on what a potential compromise over Ukraine might look like, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the discussions.

Afterward, speaking alongside Trump, Putin said the talks could pave the way for peace in Ukraine, though neither leader revealed details of their conversation.

Reuters’ reporting provides the most detailed view yet of what the Kremlin envisions as a potential peace deal in a war that has killed and injured hundreds of thousands.

According to the Russian sources, Putin has scaled back the territorial demands he outlined in June 2024, when he called on Kyiv to hand over four provinces Moscow claims as Russian territory: Donetsk and Luhansk in the east, along with Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south.

Kyiv rejected those terms as tantamount to surrender.

In the revised proposal, Putin still insists Ukraine withdraw from the remaining areas of Donbas it controls. In exchange, Moscow would freeze the current front lines in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, the sources said.

Russia controls about 88% of the Donbas and 73% of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, according to U.S. estimates and open-source data.

Moscow is also willing to hand over the small parts of the Kharkiv, Sumy, and Dnipropetrovsk regions it controls as part of a possible deal, the sources said.

Putin is sticking, too, to his previous demands that Ukraine give up its NATO ambitions and secure a legally binding pledge from the U.S.-led military alliance that it will not expand further eastward, as well as limits on the Ukrainian army and an agreement that no Western troops will be deployed on the ground in Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping force, the sources said.

Yet the two sides remain far apart, more than three years after Putin ordered thousands of Russian troops into Ukraine in a full-scale invasion that followed the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and prolonged fighting in the country’s east between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops.

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment on the proposals.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly dismissed the idea of withdrawing from internationally recognized Ukrainian land as part of a deal and has said the industrial Donbas region serves as a fortress holding back Russian advances deeper into Ukraine.

“If we’re talking about simply withdrawing from the east, we cannot do that,” he told reporters in comments released by Kyiv on Thursday. “It is a matter of our country’s survival, involving the strongest defensive lines.”

Joining NATO, meanwhile, is a strategic objective enshrined in the country’s constitution and one Kyiv sees as its most reliable security guarantee. Zelenskyy said it was not up to Russia to decide on the alliance’s membership.

The White House and NATO did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the Russian proposals.

Political scientist Samuel Charap, chair in Russia and Eurasia policy at RAND, a U.S.-based global policy think tank, said any requirement for Ukraine to withdraw from the Donbas remained a nonstarter for Kyiv, both politically and strategically.

“Openness to ‘peace’ on terms categorically unacceptable to the other side could be more of a performance for Trump than a sign of a true willingness to compromise,” he added. “The only way to test that proposition is to begin a serious process at the working level to hash out those details.”

Trump: Putin wants to see it ended

Russian forces currently control a fifth of Ukraine, an area about the size of the U.S. state of Ohio, according to U.S. estimates and open-source maps.

The three sources close to the Kremlin said the summit in Anchorage, Alaska, had ushered in the best chance for peace since the war began because there had been specific discussions about Russia’s terms and Putin had shown a willingness to give ground.

“Putin is ready for peace – for compromise. That is the message that was conveyed to Trump,” one of the sources said.

The sources cautioned that it was unclear to Moscow whether Ukraine would be prepared to cede the remaining parts of Donbas, and that if it did not, the war would continue. Also unclear was whether the United States would give any recognition to Russian-held Ukrainian territory, they added.

A fourth source said that though economic issues were secondary for Putin, he understood Russia’s economic vulnerability and the scale of the effort needed to go further into Ukraine.

Trump has said he wants to end the “bloodbath” of the war and be remembered as a “peacemaker president.” On Monday, he said he had begun arranging a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders, to be followed by a trilateral summit with the U.S. president.

“I believe Vladimir Putin wants to see it ended,” Trump said beside Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. “I feel confident we are going to get it solved.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday that Putin was prepared to meet Zelenskyy but that all issues had to be worked through first, and there was a question about Zelenskyy’s authority to sign a peace deal.

Putin has repeatedly raised doubts about Zelenskyy’s legitimacy, as his term was due to expire in May 2024, but the war has prevented a new presidential election. Kyiv says Zelenskyy remains the legitimate president.

The leaders of Britain, France, and Germany have said they are skeptical that Putin wants to end the war.

Security guarantees for Ukraine

Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, was instrumental in paving the way for the summit and the latest drive for peace, according to two of the Russian sources.

Witkoff met Putin in the Kremlin on Aug. 6 with Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov. At the meeting, Putin clearly conveyed to Witkoff that he was ready to compromise and set out the contours of what he could accept for peace, according to the two sources.

If Russia and Ukraine could reach an agreement, there are various options for a formal deal, including a possible three-way Russia-Ukraine-U.S. agreement recognized by the U.N. Security Council, one source said.

Another option is to return to the failed 2022 Istanbul agreements, in which Russia and Ukraine discussed Ukraine’s permanent neutrality in return for security guarantees from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council: Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States, the sources added.

“There are two choices: war or peace, and if there is no peace, then there is more war,” one source said.