Russia reportedly mulling peace process exit unless Ukraine agrees to hand over entire Donetsk region

The Kremlin is increasingly of the view that there’s little point in its continued involvement in US-brokered peace talks with Ukraine, Bloomberg reported on Saturday, adding that Russia would likely exite the process unless Kyiv agreed to hand the entire Donetsk region over to Moscow’s control. 

Speaking on condition of anonymity, Bloomberg’s sources said that next week’s meetings in Abu Dhabi could be decisive for the Kremlin, which one source said was ready to sign a draft memorandum on a peace agreement if Ukraine agreed to withdraw its troops from the parts of the Donetsk region that have not been captured by Russian forces.

The sources said that if Kyiv agreed to withdraw its remaining troops from the Donetsk region, a summit between Putin, Trump and Zelensky would be convened to sign the peace deal, after which Russian and Ukrainian forces could begin pulling their troops back from the front line. 

However, Ukraine is unlikely to agree to hand over the areas of its Donetsk region that Russia has been unable to capture in four years of war, not least, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly insisted, defensive fortifications in the Kyiv-held areas of the Donetsk region are critical to Ukrainian security. Instead, Kyiv favours a ceasefire along the current front line, with Ukraine receiving security guarantees from the US and Europe.

One of Bloomberg’s sources said that Russia was prepared to withdraw its troops from Ukraine’s Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions, and that it would not make claims on any additional territory in Ukraine’s Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. 

The source also said that while Moscow would accept a US-led peace keeping force to police the ceasefire, and drop its demand that the Ukrainian military be capped at a certain size, the Kremlin would not accept the deployment of foreign troops in Ukraine.