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News Analysis
The contested region is where Russia’s war in Ukraine began a decade ago. Scores of Ukrainian soldiers have died defending it. Would Ukraine give it up now?
Aug. 24, 2025, 12:01 a.m. ET
For President Trump, the map of Ukraine on an easel in the Oval Office had an obvious message. Russia has taken a big chunk of territory in an eastern region known as the Donbas. That territory, shaded in red, was gone. Ukraine needed to make a deal to get peace, or it risked losing more.
For President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, the map, displayed at a meeting on Monday with the two presidents and European leaders, presented a far more complicated picture. This was not a business deal or a poker game. This was personal.
Away from the cameras, he told Mr. Trump that his grandfather had fought in World War II to free the cities of the Donbas from the Nazis. He could not just give it up.
On Wednesday, hours after he returned to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, Mr. Zelensky reiterated the point.
“There were many such families” who fought to free the Donbas, Mr. Zelensky told reporters. “Many fell and many were wounded. And I explained that this is a particularly painful moment in our history and a particularly painful part of life in Ukraine. It is not as simple as it may appear to some.”
