Putin’s biggest demand involves Ukraine surrendering Donetsk, its most fortified region

Ukraine’s most heavily fortified region has become the center-point for peace talks to end the war with Russian leader Vladimir Putin reportedly demanding that Kyiv cede the entire territory to Moscow.

But the Donestk oblast — which is smaller than Massachusetts and home to about 4 million people — has been at the center of some of the most brutal fighting of the war, and the Kremlin has not been able to take the entire region after more than three and a half years.

A source familiar with Friday’s meeting between Putin and President Trump described negotiations over the fate of Donetsk as “the ball game.”

“Every issue is an ancillary issue, except Donetsk,” the source previously told The Post.

Ukrainian officials and western observers say giving up the territory without a fight should be a nonstarter.

George Barros, the Russian team head for the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War think tank, said conceding the land would be playing right into Putin’s hands and leave Ukraine susceptible for a future assault.

He called such a move a “foolish proposition.”

Russia has been desperate for full control of the coal and mineral-rich Donetsk border region since Moscow backed a rebellion by Moscow-friendly leaders in the oblast in 2014.

The Kremlin’s troops currently occupy about 70% of Donetsk.

Russian control of other contested regions, including Luhansk, is more complete.

Moscow had previously recognized the regions as the “Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republic” before launching the 2022 invasion.

Despite its advancements in the frontlines, Russia has found it increasingly difficult to take all of Donetsk, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asserting that his forces still hold the strategic cities of Sloviansk and Kramators, which have served as a “fortress belt” guarding against Moscow’s fighters.

Moscow’s inability to make proper advances and maintain the territory it’s taken so far in Donetsk has revealed clear weaknesses in Putin’s army, leading the Russian strongman to wager the whole region for the West’s desire for a cease-fire, Barros said.

“Putin wants the territory that he hasn’t been able to get in more than three years of fighting, land that would take more than a year of fighting and suffering more losses to get,” he said. “It makes sense for him to demand something like this.”

Putin reportedly told Trump his forces could conquer Donetsk by October if Ukraine didn’t give up the land as part of a peace deal — but Kyiv and US observers point out that the Kremlin has failed to take it for more than a decade.

“Even if we’re being generous to the Russians and say they can maintain their current advance, which we know they can’t keep up and have been pushed back from… It would take about 475 days for Russia to take the entirety of Donetsk, that’s December 2026,” Barros said.

One American veteran serving in the Ukrainian Armed Services scoffed, “Donetsk by October? They’ve been saying that since February of ‘22.”

Not only would conceding Donetsk give Putin the win he’s desired for years, but it would also remove Ukraine’s critical defense from the battlefield.

If Russia’s invading army is allowed to stroll through Donetsk, Ukraine would have to “urgently build up massive defensive fortifications along the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border areas, whose terrain is poorly suited to act as a defensive line,” the ISW warned.

The think tank ultimately concluded that if Donetsk is lost, Russia would have the perfect launching point to mount its next attack from.