Moving Past ‘Spirit of Anchorage’ Could Spur More Realistic Negotiations

Moving Past ‘Spirit of Anchorage’ Could Spur More Realistic Negotiations

Executive Summary: 

• Russia continues to demand that Kyiv cede the Ukrainian-controlled parts of its Donetsk oblast, promoting the “spirit of Anchorage” to allege that the United States informally accepted Russian control of the entire Donbas region, which comprises the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, as a starting point in peace talks.  
• U.S. officials have recently disputed that any agreement was reached during the August 2025 talks in Alaska, resetting the stage for more realistic negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Ceding the remaining Ukrainian-controlled areas of Donetsk Oblast would undermine Ukraine’s eastern defenses by putting its “fortress belt” into Russian hands, making it an unlikely concession.
• Under Ukraine’s Constitution, territorial changes require a constitutional referendum and approval from Ukraine’s parliament. Constitutional amendments cannot occur under martial law, which is unlikely to be lifted during active war. Approximately 57 percent of Ukrainians do not support ceding unoccupied territory, suggesting that a referendum is not likely to be successful.
• In early June, Zelenskyy said that the fastest path to ending Russia’s war against Ukraine would be an internationally monitored ceasefire along the current line of contact followed by negotiations, without Ukraine first ceding territory.

Kyiv ceding the remaining Ukrainian-controlled part of Donetsk oblast has been one of Moscow’s most consistent demands. In an interview with a Russian state journalist published on the Kremlin website on June 28, Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated that his objective, “the final liberation of Donbas and Novorossiya,” remains unchanged, a maximalist claim to Ukrainian territory including the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts (President of Russia, June 28).

On June 25, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Washington and Moscow had not reached any agreements during the meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, in August 2025. Rubio reset the stage for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, saying, “There was a proposal in Alaska, but there was no agreement. If there had been an agreement, we would have had an end of the war” (Interfax, June 25). Russia has asserted that the Alaska meeting yielded a U.S.–Russian understanding about the outlines of a peace deal, which is often called “the spirit of Anchorage,” and is regarded in the Kremlin as a positive step for Russian interests. Just one day prior, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had asserted that Russia “believed an agreement had been reached” in Anchorage (Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, June 24). In direct response to Rubio’s subsequent rebuttal, Lavrov said on June 26, “When my colleague Rubio says that there were only proposals in Alaska, but there was no agreement, it raises a question for me in terms of what we mean by the agreement” (Telegram/@MID_Russia, June 26).

According to Axios, two officials present at the Group of Seven (G7) summit held earlier in June said that Trump expressed frustration with Putin and signaled he could walk away from the so-called “Anchorage understanding.” While the content of the Anchorage talks remains widely unknown, Axios described it as the United States accepting Russian control of Ukraine’s Donbas region under a peace deal (Axios, June 27).

As of early June, Russia controlled virtually all of Ukraine’s Luhansk oblast, 80 percent of the Donetsk oblast, and about 75 percent of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts (Institute for the Study of War, June 5). Russia amended its Constitution in October 2022 to claim all four oblasts as constituent regions of the Russian Federation, despite controlling only parts of them (Constitution of the Russian Federation, accessed on June 28).  

Ukrainian fortifications in the so-called “kill zone”—a heavily contested, approximately 15–30 kilometer (9–18 mile) strip of land on either side of the front line characterized by constant surveillance and concentrated drone strikes, making any movement extremely dangerous—are extensive. They feature a sophisticated web of trenches and anti-tank ditches, concrete slabs (dragon’s teeth) to stop tanks and other vehicles, mines, and various metal wires to slow Russian infantry (United24, December 15, 2025). These constantly evolving fortifications exact a heavy price on Russian advances. According to Ukraine’s General Staff, Russian forces have suffered more than 1.39 million casualties since February 2022, while making only incremental territorial gains since 2024 (Kyiv Independent, June 21). According to Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, Russian battlefield losses have exceeded recruitment since this January (The Times, June 26).  

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has maintained that Ukraine will not legally give up its territories. In an early June interview, Zelenskyy said that the fastest path to ending the war would be an internationally monitored ceasefire along the current line of contact followed by negotiations, without Ukraine first ceding any of its territory (Sky News, June 8).  

Entertaining Russia’s demand for Ukraine to give up the parts of the Donetsk oblast that it does not control—let alone the unoccupied parts of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts—could stall prospects for negotiations. Ukrainian officials, including Zelenskyy and top military commanders, assert that this territory is the backbone of Ukraine’s defense in the east (Ukrainska Pravda, January 2). 

Ukrainian forces have built extensive fortifications anchored along the “fortress belt” in the parts of the Donetsk oblast that remained under Ukraine’s control over the last 11 years. The fortress belt is a roughly 50-kilometer (30-mile) line of several large urban centers—including Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, Kostyantynivka, and Druzhkivka—that offers optimal terrain for defense in terms of urban settlements, population density, the Kryvyi Torets and Kazenyi Torets rivers, rising elevation, and slope. Nothing comparable exists or can realistically be recreated in the west (New Voice of Ukraine, April 15). 

Although the remaining Ukrainian-controlled part of Donetsk oblast accounts for only about one percent of Ukrainian territory, relinquishing it would remove Ukraine’s principal defensive line in the east, opening the way for Russian advances across the sparsely populated lowlands to cities including Kyiv, Dnipro, and Kharkiv.

Zelenskyy cannot legally give away Ukrainian territory without a constitutional referendum and approval from Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada (The Constitution of Ukraine, accessed July 8). Amending Ukraine’s Constitution to allow for territorial changes—a long, multistep process—cannot legally be done under martial law, which is unlikely to be lifted during active war. As Zelenskyy put it in August 2025, “I am not going to surrender my country because I have no right to do so. This is not about hiding behind the Constitution. Is the state someone’s private property? Is 30 percent of Donetsk oblast my private property?” (Suspilne, August 12, 2025). For Zelenskyy to officially or permanently cede Ukrainian territory without approval from parliament and a referendum would dismantle Ukraine’s democratic system. Given Ukrainians’ demonstrated commitment to defending their democracy, this would likely cost him the presidency. According to an April poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 57 percent of Ukrainians would find transferring the entire Donetsk oblast to Russian control in exchange for security guarantees from the United States and Europe to be “absolutely unacceptable,” suggesting that a referendum to give up all of the Donetsk oblast is likely to fail (Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, April 30). 

About 200,000 people remain in the Ukraine-controlled parts of the Donetsk oblast in the 5,600-square-kilometer (2,162-square-mile) area outside the “kill zone” (New Voice of Ukraine, March 3). For them, the question of ceding unoccupied territory is not merely one of sovereignty but of personal survival. Extensive documentation of life under Russian occupation—including more than 800 interviews collected by The Reckoning Project describes a pattern of enforced disappearance, torture, severe punishments, Ukrainian cultural erasure, indoctrination—which encompasses violations of the right to education, identity, and freedom of thought—militarization of children, and forced military service (see March 7, 2024, June 1; UN Human Rights Report, March 20, 2024; The Reckoning Project, September 9, 2025). [1] Russia’s invasion has already caused Europe’s largest movement of refugees since World War II. Russian aggression displaced nearly three million people between 2014 and 2022, and forced more than nine million people from their homes after Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022 (Harvard University; UNHCR, accessed June 29).

The consequences are not abstract. One case documented by The Reckoning Project concerns two brothers—one an adult, the other a minor with a disability—who attempted to flee occupied territory in the early days of the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. They were detained at a Russian checkpoint in Kyiv oblast on March 26, 2022, accused of sabotage, and taken to a detention facility in Chornobyl. There, both were interrogated, tortured, and beaten, including with electric shocks. They were later separated, and the younger brother was taken to an orphanage in Belarus, while the elder was transferred to Russia (The Reckoning Project, accessed June 29). Their mother was eventually able to bring her younger son home, but the elder remains in Russian captivity, where Ukrainian civilian detainees and prisoners of war are routinely subjected to torture, starvation, and other forms of inhumane treatment (ODIHR, September 25, 2025). 

After Ukrainian forces liberated Kherson following 254 days under Russian occupation, investigators uncovered multiple torture chambers, including facilities where children reportedly had been abused (Ukrainska Pravda, December 11, 2022; Global Right Compliance, March 2, 2023). This maltreatment is a reality that could await civilians living in the remaining Ukraine-controlled part of Donetsk oblast and other regions if they are handed over to Russia. Ukraine may suffer additional economic losses, increased numbers of displaced people, and deeper social fractures if it cedes unoccupied territory. 

Ukraine’s expanding long-range strikes against targets inside Russia have challenged Moscow’s repeated warnings that such attacks would provoke severe escalation, suggesting that some Russian threats may be less absolute than previously portrayed. If negotiations resume, the Kremlin abandoning demands that Ukraine surrender territory it still controls would remove one of the most formidable obstacles to a viable settlement. 

 Note:

[1] The Reckoning Project is a global team of journalists and lawyers documenting, publicizing, and building cases of war crimes, which this author works for.