Requested in December 2025 what the most important sticking level was once in negotiating peace in Ukraine, U.S. President Donald Trump were given instantly to the purpose: land. “Some of that land has been taken. Some of that land is maybe up for grabs,” he added.
From the very starting of the full-scale struggle, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has dominated out ceding territory to the invading Russians.
But, when the struggle in Ukraine in the end grinds to a halt, it kind of feels most probably that Russia will, certainly, keep an eye on huge parts of Ukrainian land within the south and the east – about 20% of Ukraine’s pre-2014 landmass, if nowadays’s line of exact keep an eye on is any information.
Ukrainians have spent years looking to eject Russian forces from occupied spaces within the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson administrative areas. Captured and fortified via Russia in 2014, Crimea has been most commonly out of succeed in. However in spite of Kyiv’s perfect efforts, Russia is now poised to clutch much more Ukrainian territory if the struggle does no longer finish quickly.
The drive on Zelenskyy to simply accept some type of territorial loss most effective will increase with each and every new peace plan offered – all of which come with a point of map redrawing in Russia’s desire. And even if a majority of the Ukrainian public is towards the theory of exchanging land for peace, pragmatists within the West, or even some inside Ukraine, settle for that this may nearly indisputably be a part of any peace deal.
However then what? If Ukraine accepts the de facto lack of its japanese oblasts as the cost of peace, must this be understood via Ukrainians as an everlasting or a brief concession? If the latter, what measures – if any – exist for Ukraine to in the end repair its territorial integrity?
As a world safety skilled, I might argue that it’s crucial that Ukrainians and their world backers have clear-eyed solutions to those questions now, ahead of a peace settlement is installed position.
Land misplaced eternally?
Historical past may give an invaluable, if imperfect, information to what occurs when states are pressured to cede territory to invaders.
Previous precedent suggests Ukraine should be ready for the worst: Occupied territories, as soon as misplaced, incessantly stay so indefinitely. That is what took place when the Soviet Union conquered the province of Karelia from Finland following the Iciness Warfare in 1939-1940. Finland attempted to reclaim Karelia from Moscow by means of army approach within the Continuation Warfare of 1941-1944. However Finnish forces had been in the end crushed again.
Finnish troops all through the Continuation Warfare.
Ullstein bild by means of Getty Photographs
Within the aftermath, Moscow ordered the mass expulsion of ethnic Finns and carried out a program of political and cultural assimilation. Nowadays, ethnic Russians make up greater than 80% of Karelia’s inhabitants.
Make stronger for reabsorbing Karelia into Finland is low. When surveyed in regards to the concept two decades in the past, maximum Finns balked at the price of integrating deficient, Russian-speaking communities into their thriving geographical region.
The similar may occur to the occupied territories in japanese Ukraine. Through the years, Russian-controlled spaces would possibly turn out to be “Russified” to the purpose of now not being recognizably Ukrainian. In Crimea since 2014, as an example, Russia is assumed to have moved greater than 200,000 Russian electorate into the territory, along with expelling ethnic Ukrainians.
Despite the fact that they aren’t forcibly expelled, civilians within the occupied spaces who’re dependable to Kyiv would possibly select to go away, and already hundreds of thousands have. However doing so approach leaving behind assets to ethnic Russians – and as soon as assets is ceded, it makes the probabilities of an everlasting go back that a lot more difficult. Ukrainians who stay will face nearly sure repression.
As career wears on, the social and financial variations between the ceded territories and the unfastened spaces of Ukraine will most probably turn out to be ever starker. And this might be very true if Ukraine joins the Eu Union – one thing that Kyiv has lengthy coveted and can be a sweetener to any peace deal involving land loss.
With fewer pro-Eu Ukrainians residing there and a much broader cultural divide, the possibility of reclaiming the Russian-controlled oblasts may turn out to be markedly much less sexy to Ukrainians than apparently nowadays.
International relations and struggle: Lifeless ends
Nonetheless, Ukrainians would possibly hope that they may be able to steer clear of this result via transferring all of a sudden to undo the career ahead of it turns into irreversible. In principle, they may accomplish this certainly one of two techniques: via deal-making or via preventing. However in apply, nor is prone to paintings.
Examples of a negotiated, voluntary go back of land are few and a ways between. In 1979, Egypt controlled to barter the go back of its Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had captured all through the Six-Day Warfare in 1967. Despite the fact that some in Israel sought after to stay hang of the Sinai for safety causes, Israeli leaders as a substitute made up our minds to change the territory in alternate for a sturdy peace with Egypt, a number one Arab country, within the hope that others would practice.
The issue for Ukraine is that Kyiv has little or no to supply Russia in alternate for its misplaced territories. If and when the prevailing struggle ends, it’s going to most probably be on phrases favorable to Moscow, which is why territorial concessions are at the desk to start with.
President Donald Trump greets Russian President Vladimir Putin on Aug. 15, 2025, in Anchorage, Alaska.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Photographs
If Ukraine can not negotiate the go back of the occupied territories as a part of a peace association, it most probably implies that it will be unable to barter their go back within the post-peace segment, both.
What in regards to the doable to regain the occupied territories via pressure? Finland attempted that during Karelia and failed. However different nations were extra lucky: France regained Alsace-Lorraine from Germany after International Warfare I, as an example. Nevertheless it was once a reversal that took just about 50 years to result in – Germany had annexed the territory within the Franco-Prussian Warfare of 1871.
Given the large disparity in dimension, inhabitants and troop numbers between Russia and Ukraine, it’s extremely not going that Ukraine may reclaim the territories via struggle – no longer least of all as a result of its world backers would very most probably refuse to toughen Kyiv in a struggle of selection towards nuclear-armed Russia. The duty can be made more difficult nonetheless must Russia reach getting some type of Ukrainian disarmament, or a downsizing of its army, into any peace deal.
A black swan match
There is just one different set of cases below which territorial conquests have a tendency to be undone in global politics: When the world components is convulsed via a big, system-level exchange or disaster. This would possibly come with a regional or global struggle, or the implosion of a super energy – on this case, Russia.
That is how Czechoslovakia reclaimed the Sudetenland from Germany in 1945, China restored its keep an eye on over Manchuria from Japan on the finish of International Warfare II, and the Baltic states regained their independence from the Soviet Union in 1990-1991 – no longer as a result of they fought and gained a slender struggle of reconquest, however as a result of their occupiers collapsed below the drive of an exterior or interior disaster.
May Russia cave in from inside within the match of the dying or ouster of Putin, an financial disaster, or any other crucial construction within the a long time to come back?
It’s inconceivable to expect. However within the base line, must Ukraine be pressured to simply accept land loss as a part of any peace deal, it’ll require a seismic match in Russia for the territorial adjustments to be reversed.
