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Temporary ceasefire or redrawing borders? What ‘territorial concessions’ mean to Ukraine, Russia, and the US

After Ukrainian and U.S. officials met in Saudi Arabia for peace deal talks to end the war with Russia, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed on March 12 that potential "territorial concessions" from Ukraine were part of the discussion.

Since U.S. President Donald Trump was inaugurated in January and opened talks with the goal of ending the war quickly, members of his administration have repeatedly expressed that Ukraine will need to drop its long-standing demand that any end to the war involves a full return of captured territories.

In recent months, Kyiv has relented and signaled that it is open to some sort of territorial concessions, inching closer to compromise between the two parties at war.

But even with concessions potentially on the table, the parties in the conflict still have a stark divide to bridge. While a gulf remains between Russia and Ukraine on what territory could be up for negotiation, they also stand at odds on a far more basic question: how to define territorial concessions.

“The phrase ‘territorial concessions’ means different things to different state actors,” George Barros, who heads the Russia and geospatial intelligence teams at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), said in a written response to Kyiv Independent questions.

Clarifying what the different sides mean when they use the phrase is “key to understanding the opposing negotiating positions and the fraught information environment surrounding peace negotiations,” he said.

U.S. and Ukrainian officials attend a meeting hosted by Saudi Arabia in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on March 11, 2025.

Russia’s demands: Ukrainian ‘capitulation’

Russia’s demands for concessions include the complete relinquishing by Ukraine of four oblasts — Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. These oblasts contain wide swathes of territory that Ukraine currently controls, including the regional capitals of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

The four oblasts provide a valuable connection by land from Russia to Crimea, an autonomous region of Ukraine that Russia illegally annexed in 2014.

Such a concession would transfer more land to Russia than simply freezing the current battle lines, where Russia currently controls around 20% of Ukraine’s territory.

In December, Russia said that a full withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from these oblasts would be a requirement to begin peace talks, a demand that Kyiv rejected.

Not only is Russia seeking control of these territories, it is also seeking legal recognition from Ukraine and the U.S. that these territories belong to Russia.

“These demands are tantamount to a full Ukrainian and U.S. capitulation and would undermine the international-rules based order,” said Barros.

Last month, Russia also ruled out the idea of a territorial exchange — exchanging land currently controlled by Russia for portions of Ukrainian-occupied Kursk in Russia. It is currently pushing forward in Kursk and regaining territory that Ukraine has held since the surprise offensive in August.

In September 2022, Russia illegally enshrined ownership in its constitution over the four oblasts it now demands after illegal sham referendums in occupied territories, a move that holds no weight internationally.

The move, however, complicates Russia’s calculus in negotiations, said Andreas Umland, an analyst at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies (SCEES).

If Moscow formally agreed in negotiations that any of these territories do not legally belong to Russia, it would set a precedent Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely hoping to avoid, he explained.

“If there is some sort of compromise from Russia’s side on territories that, according to its constitution, officially belong to Russia, then this could be a model for future breakups from the legitimate territory of Russia,” Umland said.

If a crisis broke out in a border region of Russia that wanted to break away, they could follow the model for changing or breaking the constitution to make that happen “the same as was done in these Ukrainian territories,” he said.

Ukraine ‘cannot legally acknowledge’ occupied territory as Russian

Unlike Russia, Ukraine’s position on territorial concessions has shifted over time.

For the first years of the war — and as recently as late last year — Ukraine maintained it wouldn’t negotiate any peace deal that didn’t include a full restoration of Ukraine’s sovereign land. Ukraine has demanded a return to its 2014 borders, prior to Russia’s seizing of Crimea and a small area of the Donbas, though some see the 2022 borders as a more viable option, meaning the territory Ukraine held prior to the full-scale invasion.

That position has softened in recent months as territory and troop losses mount during the third year of Russia’s invasion and as the U.S. ramps up pressure on Ukraine to reach a quick settlement.

“We cannot legally acknowledge any occupied territory of Ukraine as Russian."

While Ukraine now signals that it could accept the temporary occupation of territories Russia has seized, President Volodymyr Zelensky has underscored that Ukraine would still retain its legal claims to the land.

“We cannot legally acknowledge any occupied territory of Ukraine as Russian," Zelensky said in November.

Ukraine is also not offering any concessions of land that Russia does not currently control.

President Volodymyr Zelensky takes part in the Ukraine Contact Group meeting at Ramstein Air Base, Germany on Sep. 6, 2024.

The willingness among Ukraine’s people to make territorial concessions to end the war quickly is at an all-time high, but the view is still in the minority, according to polling from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) published on Jan. 3.

The poll found that around 38% percent of Ukrainians were open to conceding territory in a peace deal, up from 8% in December 2022.

The number of Ukrainians who oppose giving up territories under any circumstances, “even if this would prolong the war and threaten the preservation of independence,” stands at 51%, according to the poll.

A Gallup poll released in November 2024, however, found that just over half of Ukrainians were open to territorial concessions, compared with 38% who were not.

“The United States will never, never, never recognize Russia's claims on Ukraine's sovereign territory."

Zelensky faces pressure to make a deal, but Ukrainian people are split over what type of deal is acceptable, said Umland of SCEES.

“I think that is also one of Russia's strategies,” said Umland. “They want to create this contentious issue in Ukraine.”

Neither poll clarified whether territorial concessions meant signing over land to Russia or an agreement where Ukraine would acknowledge occupation while still retaining its claim to the land.

A transactional US

Russia and Ukraine’s stances on territorial concessions are clear, if incompatible.

What the U.S. means when it demands territorial concessions is far less explicit.

Under the previous U.S. administration, former President Joe Biden ruled out handing land to Russia.

“The United States will never, never, never recognize Russia's claims on Ukraine's sovereign territory," U.S. President Joe Biden said on Sept. 29, 2022, after Russia illegally annexed Ukraine’s four eastern oblasts.

Trump’s approach, however, has been far more transactional and no longer emphasizes Ukrainian sovereignty.

U.S. President Donald Trump exits a Tesla Model S on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, on March 11, 2025.

Trump reportedly said he wanted to see that Ukraine is willing to make territorial concessions before he restarted military aid to and intelligence Ukraine after cutting it in March, but hasn’t specified what this could look like.

Intelligence sharing and military aid were restored on March 11, after Ukraine and the United States agreed to a plan for a 30-day ceasefire. Whether Russia will agree to the terms is unknown.

A Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on March 7 that it hadn’t received any official proposals for territorial concessions.

Earlier in March, Zelensky called for more clarity on the U.S.’s position. Ahead of the March 11 talks in Saudi Arabia, a source in Zelensky’s office responded to a question about what the Ukraine team expected to learn: “Finally hearing what the Americans want from the negotiations."

“It’s unclear what the U.S. is seeking in terms of territorial concessions,” ISW’s Barros said.

“For the U.S., there is a principled model for how to deal with wars of conquest: non-recognition of occupied territory. The U.S. never officially recognized the Soviet Union’s occupation of the Baltic States, for example.”

After the Soviet army invaded and occupied the Baltic countries in 1940, Acting U.S. Secretary of State Sumner Welles issued a diplomatic statement known as the Welles Declaration. It condemned the Soviet Union’s invasion and refused to recognize the Soviet-declared annexation of this territory.

The statement “lays out a principled blueprint” for how the U.S. could handle a situation where Russia continued to occupy Ukrainian land without legally recognizing it, Barros added.

The U.S. hasn’t said whether it would follow a similar model.

“The stark reality is that Ukraine has offered some concessions to get to the negotiating table (concessions on territorial integrity) whereas the Russian side has not budged at all, and demands territorial concessions on lands that Russian forces haven’t occupied on the battlefield,” Barros said.