Why the Oval Office Map Plays a Critical Role in Trump’s War on Ukraine

Russia already takes up one-fifth of Ukrainian territory – a large map showing the shaded red areas of the Oval Office, as if to highlight President Donald Trump’s talks with Volodimir Zelensky on Monday.

“I think you all looked at the map,” Trump told Fox News on Tuesday. “Most of the territory has been taken, and the territory has been occupied.”

The message from the White House to Ukraine is clear. That land has disappeared, and it is time to consider territorial compromise with Vladimir Putin, or as some have said.

Zelensky’s team brought his own map to the meeting, and the Ukrainian leader later said that he had “with what was on that map” during his conversation with Trump, talking about “who controls what – not rumors, but in reality.

While he felt he had made progress in correcting any false impressions, Trump’s view was the same on Tuesday. It’s clear that Russian troops are “apparently stronger, and you know, that’s not to say they’ve stopped.”

When asked how it feels to be with European leaders in the room about land swaps: “Now they are talking about Donbas, but Donbas is now …79% owned and controlled by Russia.”

Read more: Track the war in Ukraine with maps

Before the war began in the East in 2014, Ukraine’s wealthy mining areas in Donbas accounted for about 16% of Ukraine’s economic output.

Putin reportedly told Trump that he hopes the entire Donbass region is part of a broad peace deal.

Of course, this will provide Russian leaders with a lot of blood and treasure.

Zelensky said he also argued that the percentage of control in many regions of Russia showed on the White House map, ranging from 99% in Luhansk and 76% in Donetsk in Donbas; 73% in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia and Kherson; Kharkiv in the northeast was 4%; and 1% in Sumy and Mykolaiv.

An analysis of the latest data based in the American War Institute also led to similar numbers to the White House, and any differences could depend on the different approaches used, especially within Russia’s control over a region. The part can be subject to limited control or can be claimed only by Moscow.

In areas where the White House suggests that 1% of the area is under Russian control, this may only reflect the limited presence of Russians, such as Mykolaiv in the south or places that were largely repelled, such as Sumy in the north.

Whether under the Russian control of Donetsk, whether it is a real person, the fortress city of Kramertok and the neighboring Sloviask in the Donetsk region remain home to a large population.

Local officials said about 242,000 people live in Ukrainian-controlled areas in the Donetsk region and no Ukrainian head of state would consider handing over its territory to Moscow.

Despite the progress made by Russian forces in recent months, ISW estimates that capturing the rest of the Donetsk region “will likely take years of Russian forces to complete after several tough movements.”

Zelensky said the map of Ukraine he showed has managed to occupy 1% of Ukrainian territory in the past 1,000 days.

Analysts at Ukraine’s Deepstateua Mapping Group said that since November 2022, the analyst translated it into 5,842 square kilometers.

Although Russia did have successful success in the early stages of a full-scale invasion, it was deeply pointed out that a large portion of the occupied territory was liberated at that time.

However, Russia has made undeniable progress in the past two to three months, even though the frontline has been barely changed since the early months of the war.

Defence analyst Konrad Muzyka, head of Rochan Consulting, said Russia’s advance was clearly accelerating in certain areas near Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region and in Kreminna in Luhansk.

“We’re seeing more fires and Ukrainians really can’t deploy enough firefighters to eliminate them,” he told the BBC.

Muzyka cites the lack of Ukrainian manpower to defend a long frontline, but Russia is increasingly using drones targeting soldiers, their equipment, and especially their artillery.

At the same time, Russia was able to recruit 30-35,000 soldiers, even though they suffered huge losses on the ground that could build large operations and strategic reserves.

However, Russia’s rapid growth in limited areas of the East has not yet matched elsewhere.

Ukrainian military leaders said a Russian attempt to seize 10-15 kilometers and fought successfully along Ukrainian-controlled territory near Dobrobia, Donetsk region.

Although Russia does own some land in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions, Ukraine is still controlling about 6,600 square kilometers of Donbas.

Not only did Putin claim that Ukraine is widely claimed, he has annexed four regions as well as Crimea, even if many are out of reach.

Britain’s defense intelligence update recently estimated that based solely on Russia’s “gradual battlefield progress” it will take 4.4 years to capture the four regions of Luhanske, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

This alone explains the different views of Trump and Zelensky showing the 1200-kilometer front line on the map.

“Thank you for the map, by the way, that’s great,” Zelensky told him, despite their differences, “I’m thinking about how to bring it back.”