MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s five-hour meeting at the Kremlin with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and senior adviser Jared Kushner ended in deadlock over a proposed Ukraine peace framework, as neither side backed away from core territorial demands, Dec. 4, 2025. The stalemate underscored how Moscow’s insistence that any cease-fire enshrine full Russian control of the Donetsk region collides with Washington’s pledge not to force Kyiv into surrendering sovereign territory.
Russian officials emerged from the talks repeating that any agreement must recognise Russia’s claims to all of Donbas, including the remaining slice of the Donetsk region still controlled by Ukraine’s army. Putin has recently warned that Russia will take the entire Donbas “militarily or otherwise,” signalling that he views Ukrainian withdrawal from Donetsk as the price of a cease-fire rather than a concession to be negotiated. Ukraine and its Western backers continue to reject those terms as a violation of international law and the U.N. Charter.
The U.S. delegation came to Moscow carrying revised versions of a 28-point peace outline first drafted earlier this year, which would freeze front lines, limit Ukraine’s future military size, and lock in long-term security guarantees backed by sanctions “snapback” clauses. Analysts say the latest revisions were meant to soften earlier provisions that appeared to recognise Russian control over all of the Donetsk region and other occupied areas, but U.S. officials have not disclosed the full text that was shown to Putin.
Kremlin aides, buoyed by Russia’s claim to have captured the logistics hub of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region, argued that the battlefield balance now favours Moscow and that any deal must “reflect realities on the ground.” U.S. and European officials counter that locking in those gains would reward aggression and leave Ukraine exposed to future attacks. With the Donetsk region now central to both Russia’s war narrative and Ukraine’s defence plans, neither side appears ready to absorb the domestic backlash that a compromise there would trigger.
Why the Donetsk region is the hinge of the whole peace effort
The Donetsk region, part of the wider Donbas industrial belt, has been at the heart of the conflict since Russian-backed forces first seized territory there in 2014. Its cities, from Sloviansk and Kramatorsk to the ruins of Bakhmut, have become fortified hubs anchoring Ukraine’s eastern defences, while mines and factories once powered the country’s coal and steel output. For Moscow, controlling the whole Donetsk region would cement a land corridor linking Russia to occupied parts of southern Ukraine and offer a powerful symbol that its “Novorossiya” project has succeeded.
Past battles in the Donetsk region, especially around Bakhmut, revealed how both sides have treated the area as a test of morale and staying power as much as territory. Long before today’s talks, experts warned that any durable settlement would have to confront the unresolved status of Donbas, which haunted the failed Minsk agreements of 2015 and set the stage for the full-scale invasion. Coverage of the battle for Bakhmut in the Donetsk region showed how much blood both sides have already spent for a few kilometres of ground.
Washington, Kyiv and Moscow read very different futures in Donetsk.
For Ukraine, conceding the Donetsk region would not only violate its constitution but also fracture public support for any peace, with President Volodymyr Zelensky repeatedly ruling out territorial swaps. U.S. officials say privately that while some voices in Washington see land-for-peace as inevitable, the current envoys have been instructed to avoid endorsing Russian annexations and to keep Kyiv closely involved in all drafts. A recent explainer on the Donetsk region as a sticking point notes that most Ukrainians oppose giving up land after years of resistance.
Russia, by contrast, has woven the Donetsk region into its domestic narrative as a “historical Russian land” and a place where it claims to protect Russian-speaking residents, despite the international community rejecting its annexation referendums as illegitimate. A visual explainer of Russia’s territorial demands shows Donetsk at the centre of a broader package that also includes Luhansk, Crimea and occupied parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Think-tank analysis, including an assessment of the unfinished U.S. peace plan, warns that locking those gains into a treaty could reshape Europe’s security order for a generation.
With the Donetsk region now the critical roadblock, diplomats say the most likely near-term outcome is not a grand bargain but a prolonged pause: more shuttle diplomacy, continued fighting at a lower tempo, and increasing pressure on both Kyiv and Moscow as the human and economic costs mount. Unless one side changes its red lines over the Donetsk region—or a broader security package emerges that makes compromise politically survivable—the deadlock seen in this week’s Putin–U.S. envoys talks may be a preview of many more to come.
