Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Russia will seize the rest of Ukraine’s Donbas by force unless Ukrainian troops pull back a demand Kyiv has strongly rejected.
Speaking in an interview that aired as he prepared to visit New Delhi, Putin framed the choice bluntly: either Russia takes the territory by military means, or Ukrainian forces leave it. The clip was shown on Russian state television on December 4, 2025.
The dispute over Donbas is hardly new. Long before the full-scale invasion in February 2022, the region made up of Donetsk and Luhansk had been the scene of an eight-year conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists. Moscow says it now wants control of the entire Donbas; Kyiv says it will not hand over land it is still defending.
Today, Russia holds about 19.2% of Ukraine’s territory. That includes Crimea (annexed in 2014), all of Luhansk, more than 80% of Donetsk, roughly three-quarters of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and small areas of several other regions. Around 5,000 square kilometres of Donetsk province remain under Ukrainian control.
In 2022 Russia declared those four regions part of its territory after referendums that most countries and Kyiv dismissed as illegitimate. The international community still considers Crimea and the occupied regions to be Ukrainian land.
Talks have not stopped. Putin met U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in the Kremlin on December 2, and described the discussions as “very useful,” saying Moscow accepted some U.S. proposals and that negotiations should continue. He also referenced ideas he and U.S. President Donald Trump discussed in Alaska in August.
But whatever diplomatic progress is made, the core gap remains wide: Moscow insists on holding the territory, while Kyiv refuses to cede land it still controls or to reward a war it says Russia started. That fundamental disagreement keeps a negotiated peace out of reach for now.
