Three ways Trump could ruin Ukraine with Putin phone call

US President Donald Trump is due to have a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin over ending the war in Ukraine, as he tries to persuade the Kremlin to adopt a 30-day ceasefire deal.

Trump said that the call – which will take place on Tuesday – would discuss  “dividing up certain assets”.

What might Putin ask for to turn the screw on Ukraine?

Territory

Since invading Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has occupied parts of Ukrainian territory in the east and south.

This is one of the key sticking points in negotiations. While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly ruled out ceding territory, several experts told The i Paper that this now seems almost impossible.

But the extent of the land loss is still up for negotiation and Putin could push for the largest possible gains during his call with Trump.

Trump told reporters on board Air Force One this weekend that he and Putin “will be talking about land”, indicating that he is willing to offer up parts of Ukraine to the Kremlin in exchange for a ceasefire.

Natalie Sabanadze, senior research fellow at Chatham House, said that the realistic best case scenario for Ukraine was that Putin agreed to a ceasefire along the current battle lines.

But Alex Petric, a senior analyst at defence and intelligence firm Janes, said even this outcome had “almost no chance.”

“The Russian military is likely to continue pushing towards western borders of the three remaining non-captured regions: the Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions,” he said.

“The best possible scenario for Ukraine would be that Russian political leadership agrees to ‘only’ capture the administrative borders of these three regions up to the eastern bank of the Dnieper river.”

The worst case scenario for Ukraine is “losing the five regions of Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia”, Petric said.

“It could lose these regions within their administrative borders, meaning that Russia gains control also of all the territory of these regions that Ukraine still holds, as of March 2025, including the territories of Kherson region and Zaporizhia region that lie on the west bank of the Dnieper river.”

Putin could also demand that the rest of the world recognise seized territories as Russian.

In August 2024, Ukraine seized the Russian city of Kursk, and had hoped to use its occupation as a key bargaining chip in ceasefire talks.

But in recent weeks, Russia has made significant advances in taking Kursk back, with Putin visiting the city last weekend, meaning Kyiv no longer has much Russian land to barter with.

Dr Jonathan Eyal, International Director at defence thinktank RUSI, said that Putin’s number one demand during his call with Trump would be a Ukrainian withdrawal from Kursk.

But Dr Eyal said that Trump appeared to have already subscribed to Russian propaganda on Kursk, claiming recently that thousands of Ukrainian troops are surrounded by the Russian military in the area – something Ukraine says is not true.

“The purpose of this kind of lie is to tell Trump that on Kursk, it is almost a done deal, and already largely returned to Russia,” he said. “The omens on negotiating this are not great for Ukraine.”

Power plants

Trump also said that he and Putin would be “talking about power plants” as another bargaining chip in the negotiations.

Trump is likely to be referring to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant – the largest in Europe – which has been occupied by Russian forces since March 2022.

The plant has seen intense fighting throughout the three-year conflict, leading to fears of a nuclear disaster, causing electricity blackouts and costing numerous lives.

Ukrainian workers are believed to be effectively held at gunpoint as they keep the facility working.

Should Putin demand control of the Zaporizhzhia power plant during his call, Ukraine would lose a key economic asset which provides more than half of Ukraine’s nuclear power and 20 per cent of its total electricity supply.

Neutrality

Moscow has repeatedly argued that peace in Ukraine is contingent on the country remaining neutral, without European or Nato troops on its soil, and likely with reduced military capacity.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko reiterated this on Sunday, saying that the Kremlin wanted an “ironclad guarantee” on the “neutral status of Ukraine [and] the refusal of Nato countries to accept it into the alliance.”

This is something Ukraine and its allies have pushed back on, with French President Emmanuel Macron saying: “If Ukraine requests allied forces to be on its territory, it is not up to Russia to accept or reject them.”

Dr Eyal said that after the Ukrainian withdrawal from Kursk, Ukrainian neutrality and military weakness would be the most important thing for Putin to put forward to Trump during their call on Tuesday.

“Putin wants an agreement that permanently confines Ukraine to a Russian sphere of influence, or leaves Ukraine utterly defenceless and at Russia’s mercy in future,” Dr Eyas said.

“More broadly, he wants a much bigger deal with Trump, which will restore Russia to a position of equality with US akin to the Soviet Union; this is what he dreams of.”

“If Trump takes Putin’s position, that these are reasonable requests, we are in very deep trouble. He may go back to the Ukrainians asking them to concede this points, and then Ukrainian can be presented as the hurdle to a ceasefire rather than Putin.”