Disagreement over control of the Donbas doesn’t have to stop peace negotiations: compromise options are available.
Almut Rochowanski is a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute and an independent activist, working for the past 20 years with grassroots civil society organizations in Russia, particularly in the North Caucasus, Ukraine, the South Caucasus, Central Asia, and Belarus.
Cross-posted from Responsible Statecraft
Among the 28 clauses contained in the initial American peace proposal, point 21 — obliging Ukraine to cede as-yet unoccupied territory in the Donbas to de facto Russian control, where it would be a “neutral demilitarised buffer zone” — has generated the most resistance and indignation.
The hastily composed European counter-proposal insists on freezing the frontline instead. This was likely intended as a poison pill that would sabotage a settlement and keep the war going; soon after, Brussels celebrated its “diplomatic success” of “thwarting a US bid to force Ukraine” into a peace deal. At subsequent talks in Geneva, U.S. and Ukrainian delegations refined the original proposal to 19 points, but kicked the can of the territorial question down the road, to a future decision by presidents Zelenskyy and Putin.
Before the two sides have even sat at the same table, the fate of the Donbas territories has emerged as the issue on which the sides are so far apart, and so unlikely to give in to the other, that it may doom peace talks before they even open.
Ukraine considers conceding territory bitter, humiliating, and painful. Understandably so: giving up even more, after the country has lost so much and so many in defending itself, is intolerable. Russia seems grimly determined to gain the territory, if need be militarily, its recent progress on the battlefield making this threat all too credible.
In this conundrum, the inhabitants of this sliver of the Donbas are offered onlytwo futures, both of them devastating. One, they will be handed to Russian occupation, with no say in the matter. If they don’t like it, they can leave behind their property, livelihood, the graves of their loved ones and become refugees. Two, their home will be pulverized as it turns into the next urban battleground and if they are lucky enough to survive, they will still come under Russian occupation.
Is this really the best peace-making we can muster? In any peace process and this one, too, territory need not be a zero-sum issue. Land, and the communities and infrastructure on it, lend themselves to a wide range of solutions that transcend “one side gets to have it, precisely so the other side can’t” and deliver a sturdier peace. As it happens, point 21 already contains language indicating a more promising direction: the “withdrawal zone will be considered a neutral demilitarized buffer zone.” Therein lies the beginnings of a way out of this impasse.
We’re told that this is ultimately about military-technical considerations, that this densely urbanized area contains the last line of built-up fortifications before — well, much of the rest — of Ukraine. To the west of the administrative border of the Donetsk oblast, settlements indeed become fewer and farther in between, and the terrain flattens out to offer no more natural barriers until the Dnipro river and the city by the same name.
Despite Russia’s full-throated assertion of having annexed the entire Donetsk oblast by popular referendum (minus, mind you, the vote of the people living in the territories Russia now also demands) and coming to “liberate” residents, these fortifications may well be the main reason it wants control over the entire Donbas.
Normally, I would hesitate to offer detailed recommendations on this or any other issue in a peace process. Prudent conflict mediators avoid pushing overly specific plans on the parties of a conflict, because as outsiders they tend to miss critical dynamics, making their suggestions feel clunky, irrelevant and overbearing.
Conversely, once the actual parties to a conflict come to the table, even after long wars have left little mutual trust, they often arrive at constructive breakthroughs to previously intractable deadlocks. In constellations thought to be zero-sum, where one side’s gain is the other side’s loss, they manage to find original, transformative solutions. They have skin in the game and are accountable for the outcome to their fellow citizens, and that spurs their collaborative imagination.
But since the current impasse is so pronounced that it may cause the entire peace effort to falter before it properly begins, I feel compelled to offer a reminder: We have been here before. In many previous peace processes — those resulting in the Bruno- de Gasperi Agreement on South Tyrol, the Bonn-Copenhagen Declarations settling the Schleswig-Holstein question, the Aaland Islands Convention, and more recently Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement and last year’s China-India border agreement. These seemingly hard binaries concerning control of territory were blurred, softened, and reimagined so that peace became possible.
These precedents show that tailor-made arrangements to break down the zero-sum logic of the current stand-off are possible. The resulting solutions might not satisfy maximalist demands of either Russia or Ukraine, but they would meet their core security needs, allow both sides to hold their head up high at the signing ceremony, and go some way to ensure the safety, dignity and well-being of the people who live on this land.
If the Russians’ main objective is preventing Ukrainian use of the fortifications, this could be accommodated through means that fall short of granting Russia exclusive civilian control and de facto recognition thereof. Why not build on that demilitarized zone in point 21 and defuse additional aspects of territorial control, by giving Ukraine a continued role in civilian governance?
Plenty of civilian affairs will need regulating: Will the region’s residents be free to come and go in both directions, without undue hindrance? Will they be able to carry goods? Which citizenship will they hold? Both, or one they choose freely? Will school diplomas be recognized on both sides, and since we’re talking about schools, which curriculum will be taught, and in which language? What about property deeds and vital records? And might we need joint procedures or standing bilateral commissions for all this coordination?
If the two parties cannot compromise along all these lines, they might agree on a temporary freeze on certain points, subject to re-opening at a designated date in the future or when certain conditions arise. If they cannot bring themselves to agree at all, but insist that the other side can’t have this land, there is, as a last resort, a Solomonic solution: neither of them can have it, and its administration will be assigned to a multilateral mission. Admittedly a remote and difficult outcome, but if this is what it takes to end the war, it will be worth the trouble.
It will be hard for Ukraine to abandon a line of fortifications that took a decade and great resources to build, but there is room in the framework of the current proposal for additional military provisions that would cushion the blow. Ukraine’s Western allies could step up and cover the cost of building new fortifications further west, possibly integrated with the formidable natural barrier of the Dnipro river. Russia could be persuaded to pull its forces further back than the newly demilitarized zone.
Such technical details are best sorted out in the haggling, bartering and pinning down of reciprocal measures that happen at the negotiating table.
It helps to remind ourselves what this is all about. These Donbas communities are not just blotches on a dismal OSINT map, with names routinely butchered by foreign reporters who do not know that they translate to “City of Peace,” “Paradise Field,” or “Holy Mountain.”
Before the war, the population of this region was several hundred thousands. Those hulking ruins of bombed-out high-rises used to contain homes, lovingly remodeled room by room. These are cities with unique identities forged by equally unique histories and proud, if faded, industrial legacies. Communities that survived the deprivations of the post-Soviet collapse and the encroaching war by dedicating themselves to their schools, colleges, hospitals and cultural institutions. Cities surrounded by dacha plots whose owners plant every square inch of soil with vegetables to pickle for the winter.
The OSINT maps don’t reveal the natural beauty of the Donbas, the tall pine forests on sandy dunes, or deep river valleys beneath wooded cliffs, where locals fish, have picnics and go mushroom hunting.
To overcome the deadlock of the territorial question, preempt attempts at spoiling the peace process or practice people-centered peace-making, we will need more creative, pragmatic diplomacy.
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