President of Ukraine rejects Putin’s demand to cede all of Donetsk Oblast – Reuters

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told U.S. President Donald Trump that Ukraine rejects a demand by Russian ruler Vladimir Putin to cede the still-unoccupied areas of the Donetsk Oblast to Russia in exchange for freezing the front in other regions, according to Reuters.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy

According to the source of Reuters news agency, Trump told Zelenskyy that Putin proposed to “freeze most front lines” in return for Ukraine giving Russia all of the Donetsk Oblast.

“Zelenskyy rejected the demand,” the source told Reuters.

Trump also said he agreed with Putin that a peace deal should be sought without the prior ceasefire that Ukraine and its European allies, until now with U.S. support, have demanded.

Reuters sources also confirmed that European leaders have been invited to join the talks between Trump and Zelenskyy on August 18, 2025.

Previously, The New York Times reported Saturday that Zelenskyy and European leaders have strongly opposed any concession of unoccupied Donbas territory, which contains key defensive positions and valuable mineral resources.

By way of background, the Trump-Putin meeting ended without agreements or a ceasefire in Ukraine, despite both leaders claiming they made “great progress.” In Alaska, Putin disseminated Russian propaganda during a statement, including a narrative as part of Russian imperial ideology that Ukraine and Russia are “brother peoples.” In his statement, he insisted on addressing what he called the “root causes” of the war.

After August 8, the US didn’t impose sanctions on Russia and other countries that fund Moscow’s war. 

After the Alaska talks, Trump said he reached an agreement with Putin on a territory exchange and that “President Zelenskyy has to agree.” As it is known, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are present in the Kurs’k Oblast. 

Previously, eight Ukrainian human rights organizations have called on all parties in the negotiation process to consider the interests of Ukrainian citizens living in the temporarily occupied territories (ТОТ) of Ukraine. In a joint statement, the organizations remind that ensuring the rights and interests of TOT residents must be part of the agreements within the negotiation process. The organizations also presented a ten-point list of specific steps that the occupying authorities must implement.

Among the specific steps that should be part of the negotiation process, the organizations highlight:

1. Releasing of all civilians arbitrarily detained by representatives of the Russian armed forces or the occupation authorities;
2. Cessation of Russia’s unlawful practice of criminal and administrative persecution and detention of Ukrainian citizens in the TOT of Ukraine, which is used as an instrument of intimidation and political pressure; 
3. Determining the temporary line of contact and establishing temporary checkpoints to allow entry and exit from the TOT of Ukraine to the government-controlled areas and vice versa (humanitarian corridors);
4. Granting humanitarian access for international organisations to the TOT of Ukraine by the RF, with the possibility of direct humanitarian assistance to Ukrainian citizens;
5. Providing available information and access to the TOT of Ukraine to search teams to establish the location of persons missing under special circumstances;
6. Ensuring the presence of international observation (monitoring) missions in all TOT of Ukraine, in particular to monitor the human rights situation;
7. Demining of settlements and civilian infrastructure in the TOT of Ukraine;
8. Ensuring that Ukrainian citizens can reside in the TOT of Ukraine without the need to obtain a Russian passport or any other documents granting the “right to reside” in the TOT of Ukraine, in accordance with the Russian legislation illegally extended to the TOT of Ukraine;
9. Ensuring unimpeded access of Ukrainian citizens in the TOT of Ukraine to medical services, social and pension benefits, education, property rights, and freedom of movement, independent sources of information;
10. Ensuring that residents of the TOT of Ukraine who have been forcibly displaced to the territory of the RF or within the TOT of Ukraine are able to return to their homes or leave for the territory controlled by the Government of Ukraine. 

Any delay in the liberation of the territories temporarily occupied by Russia will lead to the complete destruction of Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar identity there, Alena Lunova, advocacy director of the ZMINA Human Rights Center, stated live on “Radio Nakypilo.”

The human rights advocate called a proposal to discuss the de-occupation of the temporarily occupied territories in 49 years, as was voiced during talks with the aggressor country, unacceptable. She noted that the aggressor nation, in violation of international law, is demanding that Ukrainian citizens in the occupied territories obtain Russian passports or a foreigner’s document, among other things.

Alena Lunova

“We are documenting how the Russians are colonizing the temporarily occupied territories, settling them with their own citizens and thereby displacing the Ukrainian population from Ukrainian territory or destroying their identity. In 50 years, there will be no one there to talk to about de-occupation. Simply because the policy of the Russian Federation is aimed at the extermination of Ukrainianness,” Alena Lunova stated.

“A description of the Russian Federation’s violations can serve as an argument as to why this option is not suitable for Ukraine, and we need to communicate to our partners that we cannot take a years-long pause in any de-occupation policy, because there will be no more Ukrainians there,” she added, drawing a historical parallel to when Moscow, after deporting the Crimean Tatars from the Crimean peninsula in 1944, forbade them from returning home for decades.