In spring 2025, negotiating pressure on Kyiv intensified: the American side, according to Financial Times, discussed scenarios for "freezing" the front line. Roman Kostenko's position—a colonel of the SBU, veteran, and secretary of the parliamentary Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence—fits precisely into this context.
The figure Kremlin is hiding
According to Kostenko in an interview with LB.ua, if you collect all the territories captured by Russia throughout 2025 along the entire front line—from Kharkiv region to Zaporizhzhia—and overlay them on a map of Donetsk region, it would amount to approximately 16% of its area. At this pace, capturing just one region would take more than two years. This is not a victory—it is a strategic deadlock that Moscow is attempting to resolve at the negotiating table.
"No agreements can mean capitulation or territorial concessions—this creates a dangerous precedent and destroys the principles of international security."
Roman Kostenko, LB.ua
Donbas—not an exception to the rule, but the rule itself
Kostenko emphasizes the legal logic often bypassed in public discourse: Donetsk territory is strategically no different from Kyiv, Lviv, or Vinnytsia regions. This is not rhetorical exaggeration—it is a direct reference to the principle of territorial integrity enshrined in the UN Charter and the Helsinki Final Act.
LSE researchers formulated a similar argument in October 2025: any American-brokered settlement forcing Kyiv to cede territory creates a geopolitical precedent—borders can be changed by force. After that, the question of the Suwalki Corridor or the Baltic Sea becomes not hypothetical, but precedent-based.
Why Putin put Donbas on the negotiating table
In an interview with 24 Kanal, Kostenko explained the mechanism: Russia is not achieving its goals on the front and is attempting to hide strategic failures by presenting them as tactical successes. The initial goal—destruction of Ukrainian statehood—has been publicly narrowed to "protecting Donbas." This is not a change in ambitions, but a change in rhetoric under the pressure of losses.
- In 2025, Russia lost hundreds of thousands of military personnel—and advanced only 16% of one region.
- Negotiations from a position of weakness, according to Kostenko, mean that concessions will turn into appetite, not peace.
- Moscow's goal remains unchanged: to cut Ukraine off from the Black Sea and destroy Ukrainian identity as such.
Where the argument's boundary lies
Kostenko's position is internally consistent, but has a practical limitation: it does not answer the question of the cost of holding territory. The mobilization crisis, shortages in combat units, and the problem of desertion—topics the parliamentarian himself raises in the same interview—create a context in which "not to surrender" and "to have the means to hold" are different things.
If the West truly begins pressing Kyiv toward "freezing," what will matter is not the legal logic of precedent, but whether partners offer Ukraine security guarantees with a real enforcement mechanism—not just signatures on another memorandum.
