Russian General Staff Briefing Shows Map of Landlocked Ukraine

At a Russian General Staff briefing, broadcast on August 30 by the Ministry of Defense, a map was displayed depicting Ukraine as a landlocked country with no access to the Black Sea. The map excluded the Donbas republics, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, as well as Odesa and Mykolaiv regions from Ukraine’s territory.

Ukraine Without Access to the Sea

Behind General Staff Chief Valery Gerasimov, a map showed Ukraine’s borders altered to exclude the country’s southern coastal regions. This imagery presented Ukraine as entirely deprived of maritime access, a scenario long speculated as part of potential settlement options.

Western Media on Peace Concessions

Earlier in August, The New York Times, citing analysts, reported that Ukraine might agree to withdraw its forces from Donbas in exchange for security guarantees supported by the United States. According to the paper, President Volodymyr Zelensky faces a critical choice: either concede territory or risk straining ties with U.S. President Donald Trump.

“This poisoned pill Ukraine will have to swallow, and then we will see how it digests it,” said former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko.

Former EU adviser in Kyiv Balazs Jarabik also suggested that Ukraine could be forced to accept territorial losses in return for peace and Western-backed security guarantees.

On August 19, President Donald Trump declared that Ukraine would receive “a lot of land” as part of a settlement. However, he stressed that Kyiv’s accession to NATO and the return of Crimea were “impossible.” Trump added that he has always viewed Ukraine as a buffer state between Russia and Europe, though he did not specify which territories he envisioned for Ukraine.

Russia’s Position on Territorial Claims

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasized that Moscow never sought to “simply seize territories” in Crimea or Donbas. According to Lavrov, Russia’s goal was to protect Russian communities historically settled in these regions—people who had built cities, ports, factories, and sacrificed their lives there.