If the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, meet in Istanbul on Could 15, territory – and who controls it – will probably be excessive on their agenda.
Putin offered to start out direct talks between Russia and Ukraine at a press convention on Could 11. Donald Trump pushed Zelensky to just accept this provide in a social media put up, saying that “Ukraine ought to comply with this, IMMEDIATELY.”
The Ukrainian president, nonetheless buoyed by a meeting with the British, French, German and Polish leaders that called for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire, agreed shortly afterwards.
Russia has said it wants to deal with the Istanbul communique of March 2022 and a subsequent draft agreement that was negotiated, however by no means adopted, by the 2 sides in April 2022.
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These 2022 negotiations targeted on Ukraine changing into a completely impartial state and on which nations would supply safety ensures for any deal. Additionally they relegated discussions over Crimea to separate negotiations with a ten-to-15-year timeframe.
Russia makes use of the phrase “the present scenario on the bottom” as thinly disguised code for territorial questions which have change into extra contentious over the previous three years. This pertains to Russian good points on the battlefield and the unlawful annexation of 4 Ukrainian regions in September 2022 (along with Crimea, which Russia additionally illegally annexed in 2014).
Russia’s place, as articulated lately by the nation’s international minister, Sergey Lavrov, is that “the worldwide recognition of Crimea, Sevastopol, the DPR, the LPR, the Kherson and Zaporozhye areas as a part of Russia is … crucial”.
That is clearly a non-starter for Ukraine, as repeatedly stated by Zelensky. There might, nevertheless, be some flexibility on accepting that some elements of sovereign Ukrainian territory are beneath non permanent Russian management. This has been instructed by each Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, and Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko.
Institute for the Research of Warfare.
Black Sea’s strategic worth
The territories that Russia at present occupies, and claims, in Ukraine have various strategic, financial and symbolic worth for Moscow and Kyiv. The areas with the best strategic worth embrace Crimea and the territories on the shores of the Azov Sea, which offer Russia with a land hall to Crimea.
The worldwide recognition of Crimea as a part of Russia, as apparently instructed beneath the phrases of an settlement hashed out by Putin and Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, might develop the areas of the Black Sea that Russia can declare to legally management.
This might then be utilized by the Kremlin as a launchpad for renewed assaults on Ukraine and to threaten Nato’s jap maritime flank in Romania and Bulgaria. Any everlasting recognition of Russia’s management of those territories is, due to this fact, unacceptable to Ukraine and its European companions.
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Donetsk and Luhansk are of decrease strategic worth, in contrast with Crimea and the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia areas. Nonetheless, they do have financial worth due to the substantial resources situated there. These embrace a few of the mineral and different assets that had been the topic of a separate deal which the US and Ukraine concluded on April 30.
Additionally they embrace Europe’s largest nuclear energy plant in Zaporizhzhia and a big labour pressure amongst their estimated inhabitants of between 4.5 million to five.5 million individuals who will probably be important to Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction.
Past the strategic and financial worth of the illegally occupied territories, the symbolism that either side connect to their management is probably the most important impediment to any deal, given how irreconcilable Moscow’s and Kyiv’s positions are. For either side, management of those territories, or loss thereof, is what defines victory or defeat within the conflict.
Putin might be able to declare that some territorial good points in Ukraine because the begin of the full-scale invasion in February 2022 are a victory for Russia. However even for him any compromise that might see Russia hand over territory that it has conquered – often at exceptionally high cost – could be a dangerous gamble for the soundness of his regime.
Something lower than the whole restoration of the nation’s territorial integrity in its 1991 borders would suggest recognition of defeat within the conflict for Ukraine. This could critically threaten the soundness of the Zelensky authorities, whose political programme rests on precisely the premise of a return to the 1991 borders.
Lengthy-term penalties
Because of this, the Ukrainian management has change into hostage to its personal info technique, which has positioned the “return of all territories” on the high of the factors for victory. This can be a objective extensively shared amongst Ukrainians, according to a poll performed by the Razumkov Middle in March 2025. However it is going to be laborious to realize.
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Aside from the potential home fall-out from any territorial compromises that Ukraine could also be pressured to make, there’s another excuse why the territorial query has change into so intractable.
Past any strategic, financial and symbolic worth that the occupied Ukrainian territories maintain from the Kremlin’s perspective, management over territory has at all times been an instrument for Russia to pursue its broader geopolitical agenda of exercising influence over its neighbours – from Moldova, to Georgia, Armenia and Ukraine.
It’s also necessary to do not forget that Russia’s territorial claims in Ukraine have progressively expanded since 2014. Till September 2022, when it annexed the opposite 4 areas, Russia laid declare to Crimea solely.
There isn’t any assure that any territorial concession from Kyiv now would put a everlasting finish to Moscow’s territorial expansionism. It’s due to this fact worrying that Trump envoy Witkoff, in an interview with the Breitbart information web site, reiterated the US view that the 2 sides want to search out compromises on who controls which territories.
Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine was not a conflict over territory as such, however was a part of Moscow’s agenda to revive the sphere of affect that it misplaced on the finish of the chilly conflict. This agenda is much from completed.
The technique of each Moscow and Washington to deal with territorial penalties might result in a ceasefire. However it won’t tackle the basic difficulty of how you can cope with a vengeful and revisionist autocracy on Europe’s doorsteps.
