US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that active work is underway to resolve the issue of the territorial ownership of the Donbas region, Reuters reports.
Rubio called the radically different views of Ukraine and Russia on the Donetsk region in Donbas the main remaining problem, and said that it is very difficult to resolve. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin regularly repeats that Moscow will take the entire Donbas region by force if Kyiv does not give it up as part of a peace agreement. Russian forces currently control about 90% of the region.
Kyiv, in turn, has indicated that it is not going to give Moscow a territory that it has not been able to take. Public opinion polls also show that Ukrainians do not want to give the Russians part of their territory.
Rubio said it was a gap that still needed to be crossed, but at least they had managed to narrow the number of issues to one central point, which is very difficult one.
Putin has demanded that Ukraine give up a fifth of the territory of Donetsk that it still controls
– about 5,000 square kilometers – and this demand is a major stumbling block in the negotiations. Most countries in the world recognize Donetsk as part of Ukraine, while the Kremlin insists that the region is part of Russia’s historical lands.
Rubio said that US representatives could also participate in the next round of talks on the 1st of February, but they would not be Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. The talks on the 25th of January, one of the rare times when Ukrainian and Moscow envoys met face to face, ended without a result, but both sides indicated that they were open to dialogue.
Kyiv is facing increasing pressure from the administration of US President Donald Trump to give up the territory and give it to the Russians. Rubio added that security guarantees have been drawn up and agreed to by both the US and Ukraine, and stressed that the guarantees will come into effect once the war is over.
Read also: Sources: Peace deal first, security guarantees later