Final obstacle to Russia-Ukraine peace deal is control of Donetsk region, Rubio tells Senate

The issue of who will control Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region after the war is the “one remaining item” blocking a peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday.

Speaking to the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Rubio said that American negotiators were carrying out “active work” to reconcile the claims of both sides to Donetsk, which together with neighbouring Luhansk, comprises Donbas, a mineral-rich, majority Russian-speaking region of eastern Ukraine that has been occupied by Russian forces since 2014.

“It’s still a bridge we haven’t crossed,” Rubio told lawmakers. “It’s still a gap, but at least we’ve been able to narrow down the issue set to one central one, and it will probably be a very difficult one.”

Rubio did note, however, that “the notion that you would even consider a change in land” created significant political pressure on “both sides”, but particularly in Ukraine.

Following trilateral talks between US, Ukrainian and Russian officials in Abu Dhabi last weekend that he hailed as “constructive”, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated that Kyiv had no plans to cede Donbas to Russia despite Kremlin demands that it fully withdraw its troops from the region.

Zelensky said that Ukrainian forces in Donbas were “fighting for our country, for what is ours”, even as Russia continued to do “everything it can to remove Ukraine from the eastern part of our country.”

On Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that control over the Donbas region in its entirety was of “fundamental importance” to Moscow and remained central to any peace deal.

The following day, the Financial Times reported that US security guarantees to prevent future Russian attacks on Ukraine were contingent on Kyiv accepting peace terms that would see it cede Donbas to Russia.

Russian and Ukrainian delegations are expected to meet for a second round of talks in Abu Dhabi on Sunday. While Rubio said that there “might be a US presence” at the meeting, he added that US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner — the White House’s key representatives in negotiations so far — would not be in attendance.