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By Ellie Cook
Senior Defense Reporter
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The U.S. has not tied security guarantees for Ukraine post-war on Kyiv giving up all of its eastern Donbas region, a U.S. official told Newsweek, contradicting recent comments made by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Zelensky told media on Wednesday the U.S. had said it would only finalize committments to protect Ukraine post-war "once Ukraine is ready to withdraw from Donbas".
Russia controls most of the bitterly-contested Donetsk and Luhanks regions in Ukraine's east, known as the Donbas. But Kyiv still controls just under a quarter of Donetsk, which contains several important Ukrainian defenses, and a sliver of Luhansk.
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Russia has claimed to have annexed all of the Donbas, including territory still in Ukraine's grip. The Kremlin has also not budged from its maximalist demands for any peace deal to give them full control of the two regions.
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Ukraine, however, has consistently rejected pressure to give up its Donbas territory, and says its constitution bans ceding land to Russia.
Giving up unconquered territory would be deeply unpopular with a Ukrainian public scarred by years of brutal warfare.
Zelensky's comments are "false", a U.S. official told Newsweek, in response to the Ukrainian leader's remarks published by the Reuters news agency on Wednesday.
But Zelensky's words confirmed longstanding reports that the U.S. has been pressuring Ukraine to pull back from the Donbas to open up the path to a quick peace settlement.
With the war dragging into its fifth year now and little advances made by both sides on territory, analysts say it would take Moscow several more years and likely hundreds of thousands more casualties to take the rest of the Donbas by force.
Territorial control has been the fundamental sticking point the rounds of negotiations so far, with neither Russia nor Ukraine willing to make concessions.
This year's fourth round of talks were set to take place in March but were postponed after President Trump launched the war against Iran on February 28.
Zelensky said he believed the U.S. president's focus was all on the Middle East and he was looking for a quick end to the conflict in Ukraine.
"The Middle East definitely has an impact on President Trump, and I think on his next steps. President Trump, unfortunately, in my opinion, still chooses a strategy of putting more pressure on the Ukrainian side," he told Reuters.
Ukrainian officials and Kyiv's European allies have been concerned by Trump's erratic stance on Ukraine and apparent warmth toward Russia, hoping to head off a deal that would harm Kyiv while rewarding Moscow.
Ukraine wants security guarantees - assurances from the US and NATO allies that they will come to Ukraine's defence after the war if Russia - after Moscow repeatedly violated pacts of non-aggression. This happened with Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and again with its full-scale invasion in 2022.
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