Here’s the ugly truth behind any deal that would cede a chunk of Ukraine’s Donbas region to Moscow: It could immediately strengthen the Russian military, providing a major win for one of America’s leading adversaries in an era of great power competition.
In such a scenario, Ukraine would lose some of its most heavily fortified defensive positions. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s generals would seek to deepen an already substantial footprint in the strategically vital theater with new military bases. The Russian navy could gain even greater control over the Black Sea. And the Russian government, and its armed forces, could take de facto ownership of the significant mineral deposits underground in eastern Ukraine.
The U.S., Ukraine and Europe will likely insist that there be a sizable buffer zone designed to prevent Russia from turning the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts — which collectively make up the Donbas — into a new military hub that could threaten Kyiv and other former Soviet nations in eastern Europe. But it’s not clear how exactly that scenario could be prevented, short of a permanent multinational contingent of ground troops stationed in the region willing to fight the Russian army if necessary.
NATO officials, including U.S. Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met Wednesday to discuss such a plan and held a “candid discussion,” a senior alliance official told The Associated Press.
But there are few, if any, indications that any alliance member, including the U.S., is truly willing to engage in all-out war against the Russians if, as many battlefield analysts fear, the Kremlin inevitably breaks whatever agreement is made to end the current conflict.
There are a host of questions swirling around President Trump’s push to end the war, including exactly what the U.S. military commitment would be to the still-undetermined “security guarantees” the West says it is willing to provide to Ukraine. Specialists say one thing is certain, however: Russia would immediately use any new territory to expand its military reach.
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“Russia will redeploy permanent Russian forces to new bases in Ukraine and militarize their holdings,” said George Barros, the Russia team and geospatial intelligence team lead at the Institute for the Study of War, who has been closely tracking the war since its outset in February 2022.
“Russia now occupies about 20% of Ukraine and will use it to seize even more when they try this again,” Mr. Barros told The Washington Times.
He added that Russian forces right now are unlikely to take control of heavily fortified Ukrainian cities in Donetsk such as Slovyansk, Kramatorsk and others — unless those cities are effectively given to the Russians as part of a peace deal.
“The Ukrainians have turned these cities into massive fortified positions that they use to hold down the eastern front,” Mr. Barros said. “No such fortified cities exist to their west in Kharkiv or Dnipro oblasts. To lose these strong points would be a blunder and greatly complicate Ukraine’s ability to defend the rest of eastern and central Ukraine.”
There are clear indications of Russia’s intentions in the Donetsk oblast, which is already largely occupied by Russian troops. The Kyiv Independent reported Wednesday that Russian troops are turning the Donetsk International Airport into a military hub.
Specifically, satellite images appear to show the Russian military repaving old landing strips and erecting new buildings across the facility to create what could be launchpads for its ever-growing fleet of attack drones.
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In Crimea, which Russian forces seized in 2014, and elsewhere along the Azov Sea coast, Russian forces are reportedly turning old vacation resort facilities into new military barracks.
A detailed map compiled by the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies shows massive deployments of Russian forces all across its western front. It’s easy to imagine a scenario where many of those troops set up permanent bases in the Donetsk, should they gain that territory in any U.S.-backed peace agreement.
The end result would be a Russian military with more bases, forward-deployed assets and regional reach than it had before the war began.
NATO-backed buffer zone?
The prospect of a Russian military with permanent capabilities stretching deeper into eastern Europe isn’t lost on NATO and its member nations. The alliance’s 32 defense chiefs held a video conference Wednesday to discuss the kinds of security guarantees the West could offer to Ukraine.
Mr. Trump has already ruled out putting American ground troops on the ground in eastern Ukraine, though he seemingly left open the door to air assets or other military capabilities as part of a broader coalition led by Europe.
European nations appear willing to put ground troops in eastern Ukraine, though the details of such a plan remain murky at best.
On the heels of his meeting with Mr. Trump at the White House earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated Wednesday that his nation needs such promises.
“We need strong security guarantees to ensure a truly secure and lasting peace,” Mr. Zelenskyy said.
If he were to sign off on a deal giving parts of the Donbas to Russia — a concession that he is deeply reluctant to make — it seems likely Mr. Zelenskyy and his generals would want some sort of buffer zone in the Donbas.
Former Pentagon officials say they would likely insist on a specific stretch of land that, per the agreement, could not host Russian forces.
“If they were to do that, what they would have to do is negotiate not having Russian troops in the area. There can’t be any Russian troops within 1,000 kilometers, for example. But that kind of security guarantee is very fragile because it can change very fast,” said Jim Townsend, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy during the Obama administration.
“It’s something where it’s not just a land swap where you give a little bit here or a little bit there,” said Mr. Townsend, now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “It’s a big, strategic chunk they’re giving up and it’s something that the Ukrainian military is really fighting against.”
Mr. Townsend and other analysts stressed that a strong military presence from a “coalition of the willing” led by NATO’s European member states would be crucial to keep the Russians from turning Donetsk or the entire Donbas into a military launchpad for future attacks on Europe.
A key question now is whether such a deployment, should it materialize at all, would have an end date or whether participating countries would essentially be signing up for an indefinite military deployment into one of the world’s most hotly contested swaths of land.
In the meantime, Russia is ramping up military operations in the region. On Tuesday, just hours after Mr. Zelenskyy and other European leaders met with Mr. Trump, Russian state-run media said that Russian drones struck an oil refinery in the Donbas that supplies fuel to the Ukrainian army.
