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Is this the end of the Ukraine stalemate? | LBC
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Aug 18, 2025
Donald Trump is set to support Vladimir Putin's demands that Ukraine must surrender the Donbas to Russia to secure a ceasefire. Several news outlets have cited sources which claimed that during the negotiations Mr Putin demanded full control of Donetsk and Luhansk - two occupied Ukrainian regions - as a condition for ending the war. In return for the mineral-rich territories, the Kremlin said the front line would be frozen and no further territory would be taken. A source close to the matter told AFP Putin "de facto demands that Ukraine leave Donbas" and "Trump is included to support it". What did the two leaders' Alaska summit change? To make sense of the events, Lewis Goodall is joined by Mark Urban, journalist and Host of the Global Podcast Crisis Room. Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #lewisgoodall #markurban #trump #putin #zelensky #russia #ukraine #russiaukrainewar #alaskasummit #politics #lbc LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
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turn to Mark Urban, journalist and host of the global podcast Crisis Room, of course
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and an expert on all of these matters. Got a great piece in the Sunday Times on this today
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Mark, thanks so much for joining us. Let's just start with that piece that you've written. You say in that piece that a bit of received wisdom in this war has been to sort of go along
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with the narrative that the Russians have been the kind of clunky military force in this compared
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to a sort of polacky, innovative Ukrainian army, and that that is increasingly wrong
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Tell us what you mean by that. Well, yeah, I mean, look, there's no doubting
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that the Ukrainians are determined, innovative, heroic, all of those things, and that's how they've been able to hold on
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for as long as they have, and, of course, in the early part of the war, to get back a good deal of the land
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that the Russians had conquered. The Russians at the high point had nearly a quarter of Ukraine, but the Russians still have about a fifth, about 20%
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And if we look at the last year or so, it's been a stalemate
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I consider it a stalemate. But the piece in the Sunday Times today is really about the degree to which that may now be changing in Russia's favor rather than Ukraine's
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A whole lot of reasons for it to do with the tactics that they're using. but depending on the fact that the ukrainians have got such uh exhausted uh army such a shortage of
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infantry that their density of troops in the donbass is about 10 or 12 soldiers for each
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kilometer of front now if you think about that they could either be standing 80 or 100 meters
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apart but that's not the way you deploy them obviously they tend to be in bunkers with two
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three four soldiers in each bunker so what that means is that on each kilometer of front you've
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got maybe three or four bunkers the russians have been using these infiltration tactics where instead
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of coming forward with 200 men and half a dozen tanks and all the rest of it they now coming forward in little groups maybe half a dozen five soldiers often you know suicidally on golf buggies
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They've even seen electric scooters being used on these frontline raids. And then the Ukrainians in those bunkers face a choice
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If they open up on the Russians, small numbers, then the Russians will know definitively
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where their positions are. and pretty soon a glide bomb or drone attack will go in on that Ukrainian position
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If they leave them, then the Russians manage to infiltrate through their line and get further on
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And that's what's been happening, particularly in the last few weeks, in the Donetsk area of Ukraine
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Add to that a new emphasis by the Russians on far better trained, more capable drone operating units
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And all of these things add up to a big problem for the Ukrainians. You know, do you let them infiltrate or do you hit them as they come through
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Well, there have been a few instances in the last few weeks where significant numbers have successfully infiltrated
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The Ukrainians have had to commit their reserves. It all begins to feel like the Ukrainians are just about holding on
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But if something went badly wrong, they could be in real difficulties there
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And that, of course, is the context to that meeting, which will take place tomorrow between Presidents Trump and Zelensky
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What did you make, just going back to Friday though, Mark, what was your assessment of what happened in Alaska
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Was it a damp squib, or do you think that there were important developments
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even though nothing was agreed? Well, I think a bit of both probably, Lewis
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You know, we had the idea that given the way Trump had talked it up
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and of course he always does, that nothing could quite meet that sort of hyperbole
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On the other hand, I agree with what you said earlier in the programme that this movement by Trump towards Putin's position on the ceasefire
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is quite significant And of course it another negative for Zelensky because if you stop going for an immediate ceasefire then all of those things we just been talking about the tactical
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advantages that the Russians are beginning to gain, can play out. Because trying to go for a
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comprehensive deal, which is supposedly the new agreed American-Russian position, you know
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it's much more complicated. There's much more to talk about to try and reach a full agreement
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And therefore, it means the war will go on for longer and Russia will have more time to try and use the military advantages it's now building up to really turn the whole thing decisively against Ukraine in terms of the military equation
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So I think that was quite an important point. I mean, we could get into a whole discussion about ceasefire and who has been for it or against it at different points of this
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because the first year and a half of this, Zelensky was very much against calls for a ceasefire
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because he was trying to get his country back, you know, and he, at that point
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he still felt that he had some military chances. And, you know, as we know, in the first nine months of the war
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you know, they did drive the Russians back from the gates of Kiev
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They drove them back around Kharkiv and they drove them back in the south
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So things were working. But more recently, where the name of the game, certainly as far as European governments have been concerned
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is, oh, play along with Trump, don't annoy him. Because Trump, since he came into office and until Alaska had also been pushing the case for a ceasefire
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they'd gone along with it. So it's a different diplomatic business from now on
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And just finally, Mark, the briefing that is coming out of the White House, again and this could be a significant development because it is something that hitherto Trump and
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those around him have resisted is the idea that perhaps they would be willing the Americans that
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is to provide the sort of security guarantees to Ukraine that they have long been seeking
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something short of full NATO membership but nonetheless US backed security guarantees which
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is of course what has been what Keir Starmer has been asking for but I suppose you got to if you in in in Kiev you got to be thinking to yourself well surely i mean you know we been down this road before the budapest memorandum in 1994 we gave up nuclear weapons we were told by the west including the uk that you would secure
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uh ukrainian territorial integrity we all know what happened next so what would the difference
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be and is is that important well russia russia as well uh was supposedly a guarantor in the in the
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1994 Budapest memorandum that you mentioned. So there's a history of broken promises. And of
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course, the feeling that you cannot trust anything the Russians say in terms of respecting in the
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future Ukraine's territorial integrity. Look, this is a very, very difficult question. When we had a
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flurry of diplomacy about this in April, Starmer and Macron stepped forward saying, we'll put
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together a force so-called reassurance force to underpin any peace agreement but it became clear
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pretty quickly that the numbers there were looking pretty sparse even on the uk and french side we
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didn't have enough soldiers that we could send not many european allies were interested in
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contributing and of course overarching the whole thing was the question of well if they get into
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trouble will the americans particularly their air force be there just over the horizon to come in
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and save the day. And that is why the point you mentioned is potentially significant. If
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the Americans have now adopted this position post the Alaska summit, that they are willing to
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guarantee the kind of monitoring or stability force that goes in to safeguard an agreement
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it is significant. But to be frank with you, in that sort of old diplomatic formula, which Trump
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did actually use on Friday of, you know, nothing's agreed till everything's agreed
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we're such a long way from coming to a comprehensive deal that would allow this war to stop
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and solve the whole territorial question and everything else, that I think we're going to have to wait and see
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whether those implied promises of American security guarantees hold up. Mark Urban there, journalist and, of course
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host of the global podcast The Crisis Room, which he hosts with Amber Rudd, the former Home Secretary of..
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