On Friday, U.S. President Joe Biden refused to rule out the possibility of Ukraine ceding part of its territory to Russia as part of a peace deal with the country. The comments come as the war approaches its fourth month, and as Russian forces gain ground in the eastern Donbas region.
Following the president’s remarks on May’s jobs report, a reporter asked whether Ukraine would need to cede territory to achieve peace.
“From the beginning, I’ve said and I’ve been…not everyone’s agreed with me…nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,” Biden told the reporter. “It’s their territory. I’m not going to tell them what they should and shouldn’t do.”
However, the president then added that it seems to him that “at some point along the line,” there would need to be a negotiated settlement with Russia.
“And what that entails…I don’t know. I don’t think anybody knows at the time,” Biden said. “But in the meantime, we’re gonna continue to put the Ukrainians in a position where they can defend themselves.”
The comments come only a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed the extent to which the Russians have taken control of his country, with one-fifth of Ukraine now controlled by Russian forces.
Has Biden Planned This All Along?
In December last year, reports suggested that President Joe Biden was planning to urge Kyiv to make concessions to Russian-backed groups in Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts, in an effort to prevent a war from occurring.
The Associated Press reported how American officials were plotting to push the Ukrainian government to make some sort of concessions to the separatist regions in eastern Ukraine, where Kremlin-backed groups have been fighting with Ukrainian forces since at least 2014.
“Administration officials have suggested that the U.S. will press Ukraine to formally cede a measure of autonomy within its eastern Donbas region, which is now under de facto control by Russia-backed separatists who rose up against Kyiv in 2014,” AP reported at the time.
The outlet added that President Biden would face an uphill battle getting Kyiv to accept the proposed deal.
Biden wasn’t the only world leader considering it as a possibility, either. The decentralization of Ukraine, including giving Donbas a “special status” that gave the region greater powers to govern itself rather than becoming a part of the Russian state, was considered by European governments in the wake of the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. The idea, however, never took off – with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy choosing instead to promise to reclaim Crimea and regain control of Donbas.
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.