FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
If negotiations between Moscow and Kiev have been stalled for months over the issue of territories, what is holding up Donald Trump's hopes and satisfying Vladimir Putin's appetites is a 50-kilometer belt of fortifications, trenches, barbed wire and dragon's teeth that stretches between Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, passing through Druzhkivka and Kostiantynivka, along the H-20 highway.
The Kremlin knows that conquering the entire Donetsk region without firing a shot after 45 months of war would mean inheriting a fortress built at Ukrainian expense during 11 years of war and a springboard for future advances towards the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions. A significant saving in terms of financial resources and manpower.
Moreover, considering that to gain full control of the Donetsk region, Moscow would have to occupy almost 7,000 square kilometers, 1/3 of the region that holds approximately 1/4 of a million inhabitants. A laborious war. Returning to history.
The battle for Bakhmut, which lasted almost a year, resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of Wagner soldiers and mercenaries. The assault on Avdiivka required 120,000 troops, with an irreversible loss of 1 in 3. Toretsk has been besieged for months. Cities such as Kostyantynivka and Chasiv Yar continue to resist, blocking the Russian advance.
The battle for the city of Pokrovsk, the so-called “gateway to Donetsk,” has also entered its second year. Despite repeated Russian claims, the BBC reported yesterday that it had seen footage showing Ukrainian soldiers raising the Kiev flag in the northern part of the city. A propaganda war often fueled by unverifiable images.
Even casualty figures are shrouded in the fog of late autumn. According to Kiev, Moscow committed approximately 170,000 men to take Pokrovsk, a figure that experts have described as colossal.
To make a comparison, the entire German army numbers approximately 180,000 active soldiers, while the Polish army has approximately 200,000.
In November, more than 6,500 Ukrainians were reported killed in the Battle of Pokrovsk, according to the Russian Telegram channel “SHOT.” But Russian losses in 2025 alone, the worst year since the war began, are staggering: 392,000 dead and wounded so far.
By the end of the year, that number is expected to exceed 400,000. These casualties add to the 790,000 dead and wounded over the past three years, while the average daily casualty rate now exceeds 1,200 soldiers.
Despite deploying more troops and infantry, Moscow is still far from its goal of capturing the Donetsk region. Encircling cities like Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, at the current pace, would require at least another two years and hundreds of thousands of lives, as well as millions of rubles worth of weapons.
But it is not only for this reason that, according to many analysts, the surrender of Donetsk would be unreasonable, as well as immoral. In 2014, the international community turned a blind eye to Russia's move to annex Crimea.
Then, in 2022, Putin launched the biggest war in Europe in 80 years. Today, he calls Donbass “Russian territory,” ignoring centuries of warfare in these border areas that have made it a center of perpetual instability.
A territorial concession would mean repeating the mistake made in 1938 when, after the Munich Agreement, Hitler annexed part of Czechoslovakia, triggering World War II. In other words, appeasing Putin would not mean stopping him, but simply approving his expansionist ambitions.
On the other hand, other observers point out that a territorial concession would represent a reasonable price for peace, as happened in 1918 when Germany ceded Alsace-Lorraine to France, ending World War I, or in 1944 when Finland ceded parts of Karelia to the Soviet Union in the Moscow Armistice; or in 1953 with the end of the Korean War.
A difficult dilemma to resolve, but one that represents the most important diplomatic and military challenge of recent decades.
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