Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly demands that he be given control of the whole of the Donbas as part – and only part – of his price for any peace deal with Ukraine.

The area referred to as “the Donbas” consists of two regions.

Russian forces currently occupy almost all of one of them – Luhansk – and about 70% of the other – Donetsk.

The Donbas is historically an important industrial area of Ukraine, where its coal mines and heavy industries are located, as well as many of its old arms manufacturing plants from the days when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union.

The 30% of Donetsk that Ukrainian forces still hold, and would be required to give up under Mr Putin‘s demands, are very important to it for a number of reasons.

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Politically, it is not lost on all Ukrainians that Russia‘s 2014 takeover of parts of the Donbas (about 30% of the territory by the end of that year) began in the city of Sloviansk in the northern part of the unconquered Donbas.

The Ukrainians liberated that city from Russian-backed forces and have held onto it since, and paid a high price in lives and money to keep it free.

The same applies to the other cities and villages still under Kyiv’s control in Donetsk. It would be a bitter blow to Ukraine, and possibly even precipitate the removal of Volodymyr Zelenskyy as president – to give up to Russia territory that Ukraine has fought so hard to retain for the last 11 years.

But this area also has an immediate strategic importance for Kyiv.

The four significant cities in this area form a 50 to 60km “belt” of strong fortifications.

Even the Russian military refer to Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka and Kostyantynivka as the “fortress cities” and all the villages and settlements between them are well-defended, making best use of the topographical features on which they are situated.

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If Ukrainian forces had to give up these strong positions they would not be able to withdraw westwards to other defensive positions anything like as strong.

In short, they would be ceding their best defensive positions to Russian forces who could then use them as a springboard for further attacks westwards towards the Dnieper River, which the Ukrainians would struggle to defend so easily.

The fact that Russian forces have been geographically close to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk for so long without being able to take them tells its own story of the effectiveness of the “fortress cities” to hold out against Russian attacks.

Not least, there would be some advantage to Russia in gaining access to mineral fields across that part of the Donbas which incudes workable, large deposits of lithium and titanium non-ferrous metals, and also some large rare earth deposits running in a north-south geological strip along the border between Donetsk and the neighbouring region of Dnipropetrovsk.

Doubts over the value of Putin ‘security guarantees’

Some US officials have spoken about the possibility of obtaining credible security guarantees from Russia in the event that Ukraine agrees to Moscow’s terms.

It is fair to say that there is near-unanimous opinion, both among the public in Ukraine and (with only a couple of notable but minor exceptions) among political leaders in Europe, that no guarantees Mr Putin might offer would be worth anything.

His record in European security matters since he took power in Moscow in 1999 is of continual bad faith, deception, and treaty-breaking.

Russia guaranteed Ukrainian security in the Budapest Agreement of 1994 and then went on to conclude a Friendship Treaty with Ukraine in 1997 – but broke both of them by its first two invasions of Ukraine in 2014.

The Minsk Agreement and then a later “Minsk II”, followed that invasion to try to stabilise the situation.

But both of those agreements were broken very quickly by Russia.

Moscow claims these breaches were the fault of Kyiv, but the historical record gives that claim no credence.

On the eve of Russia’s full scale invasion on Ukraine in January/February 2022 Putin personally and repeatedly stressed to all the European leaders who contacted him that Russia had no intention of invading Ukraine – until the day came when it did.

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The fact is, there is simply no documentary or confirmed evidence that Mr Putin’s ambitions in Ukraine are restricted to the Donbas region.

But there is abundant documentary and confirmed public evidence to the contrary – that under Mr Putin’s leadership, Russia intends to conquer all of Ukraine and reabsorb it into the Russian federation.

Any “guarantees” that Mr Putin might offer along the way to this ultimate objective ought to be regarded as merely tactical and short-term.

Since he has honoured literally none of his previous agreements in relation to any aspect of European security, his record suggests he will break any new security guarantees as soon as he sees an advantage in doing so.

The coordinates came through last minute. The instruction was to get there fast.

People organising demonstrations, blocking motorways and major intersections, did not want police getting wind of their plans.

The one we found ourselves at, near the town of Lod, halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, felt a bit like a flash-mob protest, done and dusted in less than half an hour.

The protestors had set fire to tyres, which blazed across the motorway, filling the sky with thick black smoke.

They waved the Israeli flag and other yellow flags to show solidarity with the remaining hostages still in Gaza, whose photos they carried – their faces and names seared on the collective consciousness now – a collective trauma.

“We want the war to end, we want our hostages back, we want our soldiers back safe home, and we want the humanitarian disaster in Gaza to end”, one of the protestors told me.

“We do not want to have these crimes made in our name.”

And then she was gone, off to the next location as the group vanished in a matter of minutes, leaving police to put out the fire.

This was a day of stoppage, a nationwide strike – a change of tactics by the hostage families to up the ante with the government in their calls to stop the war, make a deal and bring the hostages home.

Benjamin Netanyahu was unmoved.

“Those who are calling for an end to the war today without defeating Hamas are not only hardening Hamas’s stance and delaying the release of our hostages, they are also ensuring that the horrors of October 7 will recur again and again”, he said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting.

Netanyahu ‘broke contract’ with us

Ahead of the day of strike action, we spoke to a former Air Force reservist who quit in April in protest over Netanyahu’s decision to break the ceasefire.

“I felt he hadn’t broken the contract with Hamas, he’d broken the contract with us – with the people, releasing the hostages, stopping the war. That was my breaking point.”

He wanted to be anonymous, identifying himself by the call sign ‘F’.

He had done three tours since the war began, mostly spent with eyes on Gaza – coordinating air strikes to support ground operations and ensuring the Air Force gets the target right.

‘This is eternal war’

“It’s very complicated, very demanding and very hectic. The main problem is to see that you follow the rules and there are lots of rules – safety rules, international law rules, military doctrine rules.

“And to see that there are no mistakes because you can check all the rules, you can make everything perfect, if there’s a mistake, it bypasses everything you did and the bomb would fall on someone you didn’t want it to fall on.”

I ask him how he feels about the huge death toll in Gaza.

“Look, the uninvolved death toll is tough. It’s tough personally, it’s tough emotionally, it’s tough professionally. It shouldn’t happen.

“When you conduct a war at this scale, it will happen. It will happen because of mistakes, because of the chaos of war.”

He is softly spoken, considered and thoughtful, but says he’s prepared to take part in the more radical protest actions, such as blocking motorways and starting fires, to try and get the message through.

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“Hamas is probably the weakest enemy we have had since 1948,” he says.

“In ’48, in the liberation of Israel, we fought seven armies, much better equipped, better ordered than us, and the war took less time.

“We stopped the war with Iran after 12 days. They are much more dangerous than Hamas. We stopped a war with Hezbollah in a couple of months, and they are still a much bigger threat than Hamas.

“You cannot eliminate a terror organisation to the last person. From my point of view, this way – this is eternal war.”

Truly, this is a moment as important as it is unusual. History does not provide us a guide here.

Never before have we seen so many world leaders gather at such short notice for a meeting like this at the White House, and with a president as consequential as he is unpredictable.

The speed with which it has been organised is remarkable. A diplomatic source has framed the hasty gathering as “organic”; the obvious next step after the Alaska summit, the source said.

The Europeans were not in the room for that. Today, they will dominate the room.

Is there a risk Donald Trump will feel encircled? I don’t think so. More likely, he will enjoy the moment, seeing himself as the great convener. And on that, he’d be right.

Whether his diplomatic process has been cack-handed or smart – and the debate there will rage on – there is no question he has created this moment of dialogue.

It was the unfolding, or unravelling, of another White House moment, back in February, which gives some key context for the day ahead.

That Trump-Zelenskyy Oval Office meltdown was a reality check for European leaders.

We all watched Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, slam the Ukrainian leader. It was excruciating but it was also instructive because, beyond the shouting, positions and attitudes were made clear.

That February meeting provided everyone with a crystallising sense of precisely who they were dealing with.

Since then, Europe and its key leaders have moulded and shifted their positions. Collectively they have transformed their own defence spending – recognising the necessity to stand on their own. And individually they have sought, urgently, to forge their own relationships with the US president.

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Each of the leaders here today has worked hard (cringingly so, some might say) to get on the right side of Trump.

Whether it be Starmer and his state visit, Stubb and his golfing skills, Meloni and her Trump-aligned politics, or Rutte and his “daddy” comments, they have all appealed in different ways to Trump. They have done so precisely for moments like today.

In the hours ahead, we can expect Trump and Zelenskyy to meet with their respective delegations. We will probably see them together in the Oval Office. Brace for no repeat of February; Zelensky knows he played that badly.

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A repeat is unlikely not least because, in a typically Trumpian way, the American president appears to be agreeing now to the very thing he chastised Zelenskyy for requesting back in February – security guarantees before the war stops.

There will be plenty to look out for in the day ahead.

With Trump, the trivial matters as much as the detail, and very often the trivial can impact the detail. So will Zelenskyy wear a suit and tie, or at least a jacket? Remember the furore over his decision to stick to his war-time combat gear in February.

After that bilateral meeting, the wider meeting is expected. The central aim of this from a European perspective will be to understand what Trump is prepared to do in terms of guaranteeing Ukrainian security, and crucially what he and Putin discussed and agreed.

Is Putin really willing to accept some sort of American-European security pact for Ukraine? That sounds like NATO without the membership, so would that really fly with the Russian president?

Beyond that – what precisely did Trump and Putin discuss in terms of territorial swaps (more accurately described as control swaps because Ukraine would be negotiating away its own land)?

There is a concern that intentional ambiguity might allow for a peace deal. The different sides will interpret the terms differently. That could be fine short-term, providing Trump with a quick fix, but longer term it could be unsustainable and dangerous.

So above all, the European leaders’ tone to Trump will be one of flattery framed by a gentle warning.

They’ll tell him that he created this moment for peace; that it is his peace and that they want to work with him to keep it (and thus cement his legacy).

But to do that, they will tell him, they need his continued commitment to them; to Europe, not capitulation to Russia.