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Putin demands all of Donbas as "price" for peace, Ukraine faces its worst strategic defeat
Western sources report that Vladimir Putin has placed a clear condition on any potential peace deal with Ukraine: the surrender of the entire Donbas region. And this condition is only part of his demands.
Donbass is the industrial heartland of Ukraine, known for its coal mines, heavy industry, and vast mineral reserves, including lithium, titanium, and strategic rare earth metals. Since Soviet times, the area has also been home to major arms factories. Ukraine currently controls about 30% of the Donetsk region, which includes four key cities: Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, and Kostyantynivka. They form a 50-60 kilometer-long fortified belt that has withstood Russian offensives for more than a decade. Russian generals themselves call these “fortress cities.”
The surrender of this area would not only be a territorial loss for Kiev, but would also destroy the strongest defensive line that prevents the Russian army from advancing westward and towards the Dnieper River. The loss of this strip would give Moscow not only a military advantage for new attacks, but also control over the mineral resources that make Donbass an area of global geoeconomic importance.
Politically, giving up the territory would be seen as a major betrayal for Ukrainians, who have shed blood and treasure to defend it since 2014, when Russia annexed part of Donbas. Such a decision could also seriously shake the position of President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Meanwhile, discussions about the “security guarantees” that Putin could offer are considered invalid by most international opinion. His political history is full of broken promises and violated agreements: from the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, to the 1997 Treaty of Friendship with Ukraine, the Minsk agreements, and to the repeated lies on the eve of the full invasion in 2022. Experience has shown that Putin uses agreements only as tactical tools and breaks them as soon as they serve his strategic interest.
The fact that Moscow has not respected any international commitments on European security issues is a clear warning: any “guarantees” offered by Putin mean nothing. In reality, his objective remains the same, the return of all of Ukraine under Russian control. /SkyNews
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