Requested in December 2025 what the most important sticking level was in negotiating peace in Ukraine, U.S. President Donald Trump received straight to the purpose: land. “A few of that land has been taken. A few of that land is possibly 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 lastly grinds to a halt, it appears doubtless that Russia will, certainly, management huge parts of Ukrainian land within the south and the east – about 20% of Ukraine’s pre-2014 landmass, if at present’s line of precise management is any information.
Ukrainians have spent years attempting to eject Russian forces from occupied areas within the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson administrative areas. Captured and fortified by Russia in 2014, Crimea has been principally out of attain. However regardless of Kyiv’s finest efforts, Russia is now poised to grab much more Ukrainian territory if the struggle doesn’t finish quickly.
The stress on Zelenskyy to just accept some form of territorial loss solely will increase with every new peace plan introduced – all of which embrace a point of map redrawing in Russia’s favor. And though a majority of the Ukrainian public is in opposition to the thought of exchanging land for peace, pragmatists within the West, and even some inside Ukraine, settle for that this may virtually actually be a part of any peace deal.
However then what? If Ukraine accepts the de facto lack of its jap oblasts as the worth of peace, ought to this be understood by Ukrainians as a everlasting or a short lived concession? If the latter, what measures – if any – exist for Ukraine to finally restore its territorial integrity?
As a global safety professional, I’d argue that it’s important that Ukrainians and their worldwide backers have clear-eyed solutions to those questions now, earlier than a peace settlement is put in place.
Land misplaced ceaselessly?
Historical past can present a helpful, 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, typically stay so indefinitely. That is what occurred when the Soviet Union conquered the province of Karelia from Finland following the Winter Warfare in 1939-1940. Finland tried to reclaim Karelia from Moscow through army means within the Continuation Warfare of 1941-1944. However Finnish forces had been in the end overwhelmed again.
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Within the aftermath, Moscow ordered the mass expulsion of ethnic Finns and applied a program of political and cultural assimilation. At present, ethnic Russians make up greater than 80% of Karelia’s inhabitants.
Help for reabsorbing Karelia into Finland is low. When surveyed concerning the thought 20 years in the past, most Finns balked at the price of integrating poor, Russian-speaking communities into their thriving nation-state.
The identical might occur to the occupied territories in jap Ukraine. Over time, Russian-controlled areas may grow to be “Russified” to the purpose of not being recognizably Ukrainian. In Crimea since 2014, for instance, Russia is believed to have moved greater than 200,000 Russian residents into the territory, along with expelling ethnic Ukrainians.
Even when they don’t seem to be forcibly expelled, civilians within the occupied areas who’re loyal to Kyiv may select to go away, and already tens of millions have. However doing so means abandoning property to ethnic Russians – and as soon as property is ceded, it makes the probabilities of a everlasting return that a lot tougher. Ukrainians who stay will face virtually sure repression.
As occupation wears on, the social and financial variations between the ceded territories and the free areas of Ukraine will doubtless grow to be ever starker. And this shall be very true if Ukraine joins the European Union – one thing that Kyiv has lengthy coveted and may very well be a sweetener to any peace deal involving land loss.
With fewer pro-European Ukrainians residing there and a wider cultural divide, the prospect of reclaiming the Russian-controlled oblasts might grow to be markedly much less engaging to Ukrainians than it seems at present.
Diplomacy and struggle: Useless ends
Nonetheless, Ukrainians may hope that they’ll keep away from this end result by shifting swiftly to undo the occupation earlier than it turns into irreversible. In principle, they might accomplish this one in all two methods: by way of deal-making or by way of combating. However in apply, neither is more likely to work.
Examples of a negotiated, voluntary return of land are few and much between. In 1979, Egypt managed to barter the return of its Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had captured in the course of the Six-Day Warfare in 1967. Though some in Israel needed to maintain maintain of the Sinai for safety causes, Israeli leaders as a substitute determined to swap the territory in trade for a sturdy peace with Egypt, a number one Arab nation, within the hope that others would comply with.
The issue for Ukraine is that Kyiv has little or no to supply Russia in trade for its misplaced territories. If and when the current struggle ends, it is going to doubtless be on phrases favorable to Moscow, which is why territorial concessions are on the desk to start with.
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If Ukraine can not negotiate the return of the occupied territories as a part of a peace association, it in all probability implies that it won’t be able to barter their return within the post-peace part, both.
What concerning the potential to regain the occupied territories by pressure? Finland tried that in Karelia and failed. However different nations have been extra lucky: France regained Alsace-Lorraine from Germany after World Warfare I, for instance. However it was a reversal that took practically 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 unlikely that Ukraine might reclaim the territories by way of struggle – not least of all as a result of its worldwide backers would very doubtless refuse to help Kyiv in a struggle of alternative in opposition to nuclear-armed Russia. The duty can be made tougher nonetheless ought to Russia reach getting some type of Ukrainian disarmament, or a downsizing of its army, into any peace deal.
A black swan occasion
There is just one different set of circumstances below which territorial conquests are usually undone in world politics: When the worldwide system is convulsed by a serious, system-level change or disaster. This may embrace a regional or world struggle, or the implosion of an incredible energy – on this case, Russia.
That is how Czechoslovakia reclaimed the Sudetenland from Germany in 1945, China restored its management over Manchuria from Japan on the finish of World Warfare II, and the Baltic states regained their independence from the Soviet Union in 1990-1991 – not as a result of they fought and gained a slender struggle of reconquest, however as a result of their occupiers collapsed below the stress of an exterior or inner disaster.
Might Russia collapse from inside within the occasion of the demise or ouster of Putin, an financial disaster, or another crucial improvement within the a long time to return?
It’s inconceivable to foretell. However within the remaining evaluation, ought to Ukraine be pressured to just accept land loss as a part of any peace deal, it could require a seismic occasion in Russia for the territorial adjustments to be reversed.
