Putin indicated Russia could be open to territory swap with Ukraine as part of peace deal — report

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin told some of Russia’s top businessmen that he may be open to swapping certain territories controlled by Russian forces in Ukraine, but he insisted on keeping the entirety of the Donbas region, the Kommersant newspaper reported.

Kommersant’s Kremlin correspondent Andrei Kolesnikov said Putin outlined the details during a late-night meeting at the Kremlin on December 24.

“Vladimir Putin asserted that the Russian side is still ready to make the concessions that he made in Anchorage. In other words, that ‘Donbas is ours,’” Kommersant reported.

Essentially, Putin wants full control of Donbas, but outside that area, a partial territorial exchange “is not ruled out,” Kolesnikov wrote.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in remarks released by his office on Wednesday, said that Ukrainian and U.S. delegations had made progress on a 20-point plan during talks over the weekend in Miami.

However, Zelenskiy noted that Ukraine and the United States have not reached an agreement on Russia’s demand that Ukraine cede the remaining parts of Donbas under its control, nor on the future of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is currently under Russian control.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to end the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II. His envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner have been negotiating with Russia, Ukraine, and European powers.

The full details of the U.S. proposals have not been disclosed, though Russian officials have referred to unspecified “understandings” reached between Putin and Trump at a summit in Anchorage, Alaska, in August.

Russia Demands Donbas

Russia currently controls all of Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, roughly 90% of Donbas, 75% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and parts of Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv, and Dnipropetrovsk regions, according to Russian estimates.

On December 19, Putin said that any peace deal should be based on his 2024 conditions: Ukraine withdrawing from all of Donbas, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions, and officially renouncing its NATO ambitions.

Kommersant also reported that Putin discussed the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest nuclear facility, during his meeting with businessmen. He mentioned the possibility of joint Russian-U.S. management of the plant and said the United States had shown interest in crypto mining near the facility. Putin suggested the plant could also partially supply electricity to Ukraine.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 in what the Kremlin describes as a “special military operation.”

—Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Michael Perry/Reuters