By Benjamin S. Dunham, ACURA, 12/5/25

In June 2024 President Putin insisted that Ukrainian troops be completely withdrawn from the territories of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, which he claimed as Russian territory. 

President Zelensky was firm: “Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupier. We will not reward Russia for what it has perpetrated.” 

It’s the very definition of a sticking point. After the flurry of negotiations over the Thanksgiving weekend, everyone seemed to agree on only one point: the greatest problem was territorial. But what if the item on the table was the creation of a new country, East Ukraine, which the international community could help shape with the input of both Ukraine and Russia? 

The history of the 20th century itemizes many such splits to solve irreconcilable national divisions—think South Sudan, South Korea, East Timor, Northern Ireland, even India and Pakistan (and Bangladesh from Pakistan). Each of these national bifurcations had its own reasons for coming into being—religion, language, culture, geography, and colonial disruption among them—and some of them have yet to prove themselves as totally successful solutions. But all of them have been useful in calming deadly conflicts, and isn’t that what the current negotiations are trying to achieve?

Throughout its existence, the region of Ukraine has been confronted with left-bank-right-bank issues, using different stretches of the Dniepro River as a dividing line, usually with only temporary success, if even that. At the end of the 19th century, the idea of an autonomous or quasi-independent southeastern region of the Russian Empire was popular among Russian industrialists, and something similar was advocated briefly in 1918 as the Donetsk–Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic, a territorial carve-out whose borders closely follow the possible outline of East Ukraine (see https://tinyurl.com/2mh5zrce).

Another example comes from the history of the Lemkos, a population of Carpatho-Rusyn mountain Slavs in what is now southern Poland who have sometimes been grouped with the greater Ukrainian community. After WWI, one of goals of the short-lived Lemko Republic in 1918-20 was not to be included in the newly established West Ukrainian People’s Republic (see Wikipedia: “The Lemko Republic”). This is of interest for its own sake but also because it suggests that even then there was an awareness of an eastern Ukraine, distinct from the fractious Galician experience. 

If Ukraine is unwilling to cede territory defended by its forces directly to Russia, and Russia is unwilling to give up territory won by its forces from Ukraine, shouldn’t negotiators entertain a settlement calling for the creation of a country to the right of the lower stretch of the Dniepro River, incorporating at least the five oblasts claimed by Russia and perhaps even the whole territory that voted in the majority for ViktorYanukovych in 2010? This was the population arguably disenfranchised by the US-supported Maidan Revolution, which caused the resistance of separatists in the Donbas oblasts and the need for Russia to protect its warm-water port in Crimea. (Of course, there are many other issues that also have to be addressed, and in this both the US 28-point proposal and the revised 19-point proposal would be instructive.)

It is true that President Zelensky along with many Western leaders might initially object, but Russia’s acceptance of East Ukraine’s creation would give the lie to arguments that Russia had its eye on an eventual territorial takeover of Europe. This perceived threat has motivated some European leaders to commit their countries to a built-up defense posture against Russia and been cited as a reason to hold fast to an “as-long-as-it-takes” support for an intact Ukraine. 

At a press conference concluding President Putin’s late-November visit to Kyrgyzstan, he dismissed claims that Russia intends to invade Europe as “complete nonsense…. The truth is: We never intended to do that. But if they want to hear it from us, well, then we’ll document it. No question.”

One step toward proving this would be for President Putin to contribute claimed Russian territory to a new eastern state. And that, of course, is the reason why Russia might agree; it’s a way of confirming Russia’s sincerity as a neighborly and not antagonistic country. Yes, this state would naturally be within Russia’s sphere of influence, but then, a rump western state would naturally be in Europe’s sphere of influence. That is the truth about Ukraine and always has been since the era of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. We should be prepared to acknowledge it.

And President Zelensky might have his own reasons for warming to the idea of East Ukraine. Unless an ultra-nationalist fills the gap in the Office of the President created by the resignation of Andriy Yermak as its Head, Zelensky might feel free to relax some of  his maximalist goals. Surely, he would prefer not to be administering a potentially unwelcome takeover of the Donbas and enforcing the Verkhovna Rada’s ban on the Russian language in educational and official usage and its ongoing repression of Russian culture and religion. 

Creating East Ukraine would also open up other compromises the government of Ukraine might agree to. For instance, it has never accepted any responsibility for attacking Ukrainian separatists in the Donbas region after the Maidan protests caused the resignation of elected president Yanukovych. But agreeing that Russia’s frozen funds could be contributed to a sovereign wealth fund whose proceeds would be devoted to restoring the damage done in the Donbas in the years before and after Russia’s invasion would be a nod in that direction.

While from a Western point of view the prospect of East Ukraine might seem too accommodating, the idea might at least deflect negotiations from the current irresolvable standoff. This proposal would respond in a positive manner both to Ukraine’s unwillingness to cede territory to Russia and to Russia’s stated goal: a neutral buffer state free of ultra-right Ukrainian nationalism and where Russian language, culture, and religion would be respected. Both Ukraine and Russia would be asked to cede territory, but not to each other. 

Structuring a neutral, non-aligned East Ukraine (without neo-Nazi elements and NATO/CIA involvement, etc.) could take months or even years, but might be the kind of project that Russia would risk a ceasefire to pursue (thereby addressing Ukraine’s unwillingness to proceed further without a ceasefire). Drawing borders, writing a new constitution, working out security issues, nominating leadership—the required tasks are almost innumerable and would require the cooperation of the best experts from all sources. Obviously, in creating a new country out of the scarred and shattered remnants of a multi-year war, there would much to occupy the proposed international committee led by President Trump, with its many transactional commercial and trade concerns, and this would be all to the good. The artillery and bombing would be stopped and the drones defused. Only the arms suppliers could object! But if so, the world would benefit from seeing their self-interested motives fully revealed.

Without some new bone like East Ukraine to chew on, would anyone bet in favor of the parties overcoming their current entrenched positions? If not, all that is left is Prof. John Mearsheimer’s stark conclusion that the conflict will only be settled on the battlefield. That way leads to further dangerous escalation, and nuclear warfare, tactical or total, would be staring us in the face.

Copyright © December 2025 Benjamin S. Dunham. The author is a retired arts administrator and journalist who writes occasionally on subjects of music, history, and politics.