Trump breaks the taboo of negotiations over Ukraine’s territories

There was a particularly tense moment at the March 11 meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, between the U.S. and Ukrainian delegations. It came when White House National Security Adviser Mike Waltz laid a map of Ukraine on the table to draw a diagram of the territorial division that could be negotiated with Russia to end the war. The Ukrainian team, led by Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s right-hand man, asked that this matter be left for later, but his interlocutors replied that it should be done now. This has been revealed by several Ukrainian media outlets that have spoken with witnesses of the meeting, although it has not been reported where Waltz’s pen passed. Donald Trump and his confidants have emphasized every day since then that Ukraine must accept that it will have to make territorial concessions.

The U.S. president has broken a taboo, perhaps the greatest in Ukraine: that of territorial sacrifices. Until Trump returned to power, whether it was his predecessor Joe Biden or Kyiv’s European allies, the official and unanimous position in the West was that Ukraine would decide when peace negotiations should begin and under what conditions. But neither the Ukrainian political nor military leadership has yet publicly mentioned something that now seems inevitable: that Vladimir Putin will not return everything he has occupied in the invaded country, nor will the U.S. demand he does so. “Any agreement will depend on territorial concessions from Ukraine and security commitments from Russia,” Waltz said.

Trump is scheduled to speak with Putin by telephone this Tuesday to discuss his proposed 30-day ceasefire. The main sticking point, the U.S. president confirmed, is the “asset sharing” between Russia and Ukraine. Trump reiterated that he has previously addressed this issue, both with the Kremlin and with Bankova, the Ukrainian presidential headquarters. Zelenskiy stated that he and his team will participate in peace negotiations “under the strong leadership of President Trump.” The initiative for the truce comes from the White House, according to Zelenskiy’s office, and the Americans should lead the talks with Russia.

Trump’s special envoy for Russia, Steve Witkoff, met with Putin in Moscow on Friday. Witkoff explained on CNN that the meeting had been “positive,” that it had smoothed over differences between Russia and the U.S., and that territorial concessions had been discussed.

The loss of control over their regions is the elephant in the room in Ukraine, a truism that they are trying to ignore. Zelenskiy’s official position is that his country will never recognize Russia’s sovereignty in the occupied territories. Foreign Minister Andrii Sibiga spoke in a similar vein on RBC this Monday: “There are fundamental things that are non-negotiable, that cannot be touched. First and foremost, the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine. Ukraine will never recognize the occupied territories [as part of Russia].”

But this does not negate the possibility that the invaded areas will remain under the control of the Kremlin, even if neither Ukraine, nor its allies, nor the United Nations, accept the legality of the annexation. Zelenskiy acknowledged in December 2024, in an interview with Le Parisien, that Ukraine does not have sufficient military strength to expel the occupying forces, but that, in the future and with sufficient Western support, Russia could be forced politically to return them.

The Ukrainian political establishment’s strategy is to avoid upsetting Trump after the rocky start to bilateral relations with Zelenskiy. Kyiv remains militarily dependent on Washington. But doubts are emerging from political think tanks. Iliya Kusa, an analyst at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future (UIF), emphasized this Monday at a conference in Kyiv that for Trump, Ukraine is not the priority, especially after breaking the historic alliance with Western European democracies: his priority is to establish a bilateral relationship with Moscow in which they share strategic interests.

“It’s obvious that the U.S. has broken the taboo regarding the inviolability of sovereignty not only in Ukraine, but also in Europe. Trump and Putin use the same rhetoric; the American president demonstrates this by wanting to seize Greenland,” Olena Snigyr, an academic at the Robert Schuman Centre of the European University Institute, explained in a telephone interview. Snigyr believes the U.S. has broken the global order and unity with Europe, something Russia has always sought. Changing the course of events will depend on Europe’s reaction, she adds: “Ukraine alone cannot withstand the pressure to yield; Ukraine alone will lose and disappear. But it is not in Europe’s interest or its security for Ukraine to fall.”

The director of the UIF, Vadim Denisenko, emphasized that a factor that is under-reported is that the White House is already in talks with the Kremlin regarding preferential participation of U.S. multinationals in the exploitation of Russian natural resources. This means that Ukraine will not be Washington’s only partner in this area after the minerals agreement is signed, under which Kyiv has agreed to cede management of 50% of the revenue from the extraction of these natural resources to the U.S.

Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant

In that interview with Le Parisien, Zelenskiy was specifically asked about Crimea and the Donbas region. The Black Sea peninsula was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. Parts of the two Donbas provinces, Luhansk and Donetsk, rose up against Kyiv with Moscow’s support. Since the 2022 invasion, all of Luhansk and 60% of Donetsk have been under Russian rule. According to Russian law, they have been part of Russia since 2022, along with the partially occupied provinces of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

Trump pointed to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on several occasions last week as one of these “assets” to be distributed. The most recent was this Sunday, when he indicated, although without explicitly naming it, that he also wants to discuss it with Putin. Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which has been under Russian occupation since 2022, was one of the issues the U.S. delegation in Jeddah wanted to discuss with the Ukrainian side. This has been interpreted as a sign that it may be one of the elements Ukraine could recover, but the Kremlin’s top-level position is that nothing will be returned, and that even the Zaporizhzhia territories in free Ukraine must be handed over to Russia.

The lack of sufficient force to militarily reconquer what was lost is not Ukraine’s only problem. As one of the most senior officers in the Ukrainian army told this newspaper in February: “After 11 years under Russian influence, our troops would be seen as the enemy if we entered Crimea or the cities of Luhansk and Donetsk.” Repopulating these provinces would be a better solution, another high-ranking military officer explained to EL PAÍS in 2023, but the longer they remain under Russian rule, the more generations will grow up disconnected from Ukraine.

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