Photo by Anastasiia Krutota on Unsplash
As debates about Ukraine’s future continue in Western capitals, one perspective remains notably under-represented – that of the Ukrainian people themselves. Proposals to cede the entire Donetsk region to Vladimir Putin in exchange for a ceasefire recur regularly, often portrayed as pragmatic or necessary for peace. But from a Ukrainian standpoint, such suggestions are not only indefensible they are perilous, both morally and strategically.
To understand why this will never happen, we must start with a simple truth: Russia has repeatedly broken the very agreements it once signed and used to reassure its neighbours and the world of its peaceful intentions.
In 1991, the Belovezha Accords and the Alma-Ata Declaration established the peaceful dissolution of the USSR, with each former republic, including Russia, recognising and respecting the territorial integrity of the others. In 1994, under the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine relinquished its nuclear arsenal in exchange for explicit guarantees of sovereignty, security, and borders from Russia among others. Those promises were broken.
The 1997 Treaty on Friendship between Russia and Ukraine reaffirmed these same principles and remained in force even after the annexation of Crimea. The 2003 border treaty formally established the boundary between the two countries, signed and ratified by both parties. All of this legal and diplomatic groundwork was discarded by Moscow when it invaded Ukraine.
This is why any current demand from the Kremlin carries no weight, not because Ukrainians are stubborn, but because they have seen what follows concessions. Crimea was seized in 2014. Then parts of Donetsk and Luhansk. Nothing stopped the escalation; on the contrary, it encouraged a full-scale invasion in 2022. Each compromise was met with new aggression.
The idea of handing over Donetsk is not about shifting boundaries on a map. It involves condemning hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens to repression, forced mobilisation, filtration camps, and the erasure of their identity. Ukraine would be forsaking its own people – to do so would be an act of national betrayal, one that no Ukrainian government could endure or justify.
On a military level, such a concession would strip Ukraine of strategically vital terrain. For over a decade, Ukraine has fortified this region, establishing defensive lines anchored in cities and on high ground. To withdraw would not enhance security – it would simply move the front to more exposed, harder-to-defend areas. The cost would be enormous, and the benefit illusory.
There is also a broader concern: accepting territorial losses under pressure could undermine the fundamental principles of international law. It would send a clear signal that war yields rewards, that treaties are meaningless, and that military aggression is a legitimate way to redraw borders. The repercussions would resonate well beyond Eastern Europe.
What Ukrainians understand through painful experience is that appeasement does not end wars. It invites the next one. Peace is not just the absence of gunfire; it is the restoration of justice and the rule of law. Real peace will come not from bargaining with an aggressor, but from the failure of his aggression – politically, economically, and militarily.
Only when Russia abandons its imperial ambitions, pays reparations, and restores its recognised borders can lasting peace begin. Until then, no demand, no threat, no ultimatum, will persuade Ukraine to exchange land for empty promises.
This is not a call for endless war. It is a refusal to build peace on the ruins of justice. Those who seek to understand this should stop speculating from afar and start listening to the people who are living through it.
Ask Ukrainians.
