On 4 October 2024, Putin signed the annexation laws. He was not simply claiming Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson as Russian territory. He wrote those claims into the Russian Constitution, which means any negotiated transfer of those regions becomes legally indistinguishable from endorsing Moscow's own statutes.
The Annexation Laws Are the Text of the Crime
So when someone demands that Ukraine cede land, they are demanding that Kyiv recognize the validity of Russian domestic law over Ukrainian sovereignty. Those same laws classify residents of the oblasts as Russian citizens. They place the regions' "defense" under Moscow's nuclear doctrine. Ask Ukraine to sign away those territories and you are asking it to ratify the document Putin signed.
No ceasefire proposal that begins with "realistically, Russia will keep" can avoid that fact. The annexation laws are a substantive measure. The text of the crime.
Disarmament and the Budapest Memorandum
In 1994, Ukraine gave up roughly 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads and sent them to Russia. It also dismantled its Tu-160 and Tu-95MS bomber fleets. This happened under the Budapest Memorandum. In exchange, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom pledged to respect Ukraine's borders. They also promised not to use economic coercion or the threat of force.
Russia broke that pledge in 2014. It annexed Crimea and armed proxies in Donbas. Then it broke the pledge again on February 24, 2022, with a full invasion. Today, any demand that Kyiv cede Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, or Kherson territory to Moscow would make the victim pay the aggressor. Pay for violating the same agreement that was supposed to make Ukraine's disarmament safe.
That is neutrality itself. A subsidy for nuclear blackmail. And a reward for the first signatory to tear up the deal.
The Concrete Reality of Territorial Compromise
In Bucha, after Russian forces withdrew in April 2022, investigators documented 458 bodies of civilians along Yablunska Street and in mass graves at the Church of St. Andrew. Many had bound hands. Many had gunshot wounds to the head. In Izyum, liberated in September 2022, forensic teams exhumed 447 bodies from a pine forest burial site. Most showed signs of violent death. Ukrainian prosecutors have opened more than 100,000 war crimes cases tied to Russian occupation.
Ceding these districts as part of a peace deal would not freeze a border. It would return living residents to the same military units and command structures that ordered the torture, execution, and disposal of their neighbors. For the families who identified relatives by dental records or a piece of clothing, territorial compromise is a concrete reality. A direct transfer of jurisdiction over their homes to the people who killed their fathers, their daughters, their friends.
The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant and the Dnipro River
Since 4 March 2022, Russian troops have held the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. It is Europe's largest, with six VVER-1000 reactors. Any negotiated freeze that accepts current front lines leaves the plant's safety systems under Rosatom and Russian military control. So do its cooling ponds and its 184 spent fuel casks.
During the 2022 occupation of Kherson, Russian artillery fired from the left bank into the city. It struck residential districts, the port, and the Antonivskyi Bridge corridor. A land-for-peace settlement would place that same Dnipro River crossing on the contact line. Moscow would gain a permanent firing position over the river and have no incentive to return the plant. Any Ukrainian government that signed such terms would be abandoning its people to radiation and shelling.
Minsk Showed What Freezing Produces
The Minsk agreements of September 2014 and February 2015 froze the Donbas front line. They never resolved the war. Russia signed both documents while still sending tanks and artillery across the Ukrainian border, along with paid fighters. By February 2022, OSCE monitors were recording thousands of ceasefire violations per day along a line that existed only on paper.
The eight years between Minsk I and the full invasion gave Moscow time to rebuild its forces and rotate commanders. It also gave Moscow time to plan the northern thrust toward Kyiv. Ceding or freezing Ukrainian territory did not produce peace. It produced a pause.
