The New Yorker reached Balázs Jarábik, a political analyst and former longtime European diplomat in Kyiv, to discuss the combined obstacles facing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in considering territorial concessions. Jarábik emphasized both political and military challenges: “The Donbas is where Ukrainians see this war as having started, in 2014, and losing the entirety of it would be a big blow to morale,” he noted. Militarily, he added, “after Donbas, there is basically just open steppe without any natural defensive lines.”