Exclusive: Putin's demand to Ukraine: give up Donbas, no NATO and no Western troops, sources say

Source: Reuters

August 21, 2025 11:16 PM EDT Updated 7 hours ago


MOSCOW, Aug 21 (Reuters) - Vladimir Putin is demanding that Ukraine give up all of the eastern Donbas region, renounce ambitions to join NATO, remain neutral and keep Western troops out of the country, three sources familiar with top-level Kremlin thinking told Reuters.

The Russian president met Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday for the first Russia-U.S. summit in more than four years and spent almost all of their three-hour closed meeting discussing what a compromise on Ukraine might look like, according to the sources who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Speaking afterwards beside Trump, Putin said the meeting would hopefully open up the road to peace in Ukraine - but neither leader gave specifics about what they discussed. In the most detailed Russian-based reporting to date on Putin's offer at the summit, Reuters was able to outline the contours of what the Kremlin would like to see in a possible peace deal to end a war that has killed and injured hundreds of thousands of people.

In essence, the Russian sources said, Putin has compromised on territorial demands he laid out in June 2024, which required Kyiv to cede the entirety of the four provinces Moscow claims as part of Russia: Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine - which make up the Donbas - plus Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south. Kyiv rejected those terms as tantamount to surrender.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/putins-demand-ukraine-give-up-donbas-no-nato-no-western-troops-sources-say-2025-08-21/