Putin Demands Complete Control of Donbas: Russia's Military Ultimatum to Ukraine

President Vladimir Putin declared in a recently published interview that Russia intends to gain complete control of Ukraine's Donbas region either through military force or by compelling Ukrainian troops to withdraw from the territory.

Since February 2022, Putin has deployed tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, following eight years of conflict between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region, which comprises the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

"Either we liberate these territories by force of arms, or Ukrainian troops leave these territories," Putin stated to India Today ahead of his visit to New Delhi, as shown in a segment on Russian state television.

Ukrainian officials have firmly rejected this ultimatum, with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy maintaining that Ukraine will not surrender its sovereign territory to Russia, arguing that Moscow should not be rewarded for initiating the conflict.

Currently, Russia controls approximately 19.2% of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea (annexed in 2014), the entirety of Luhansk, over 80% of Donetsk, roughly 75% of both Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and portions of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv, and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

Approximately 5,000 square kilometers (1,900 square miles) of Donetsk remain under Ukrainian control.

In peace negotiations with the United States, Russia has consistently demanded control over the entire Donbas region and sought informal recognition from the US of Moscow's authority over these territories.

In 2022, Russia formally declared the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia as Russian territory following referendums that Western nations and Ukraine dismissed as illegitimate. Most countries continue to recognize these regions, along with Crimea, as Ukrainian territory.

Putin recently met with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in the Kremlin, stating that Russia had accepted certain US proposals regarding Ukraine and that discussions should continue.

According to Russia's RIA state news agency, Putin described his meeting with Witkoff and Kushner as "very useful," noting that it was based on proposals he and President Donald Trump had discussed during their meeting in Alaska in August.