Why did the map of the Oval Office play a decisive role in Trump’s view of the Ukraine war?

Russia occupied five Ukrainian lands – and has placed a large map showing the shaded area in the red in the Oval Office as if to confirm this point for President Donald Trump’s talks with Voludmir Zelinski on Monday.

“I assume that you all saw the map,” Trump told Fox News on Tuesday. “A large part of the land is taken and these lands are taken.”

The message from the White House to Ukraine is unambiguous. That land has passed and it is time to consider a compromise with Vladimir Putin or, as some described it, land bodies.

The Zelinski team brought his private map to the meeting, and the Ukrainian leader later said that he was “fighting with that map” during his conversation with Trump, regarding “who controls what – not through rumors, but in reality.”

Although he felt that he had made some progress in correcting any wrong impressions, Trump’s view on Tuesday was the same. He said it was clear that Russia’s strength was “clearly powerful, and as you know, it’s not as if they stopped.”

In response to a question about what was feeling in the room with European leaders regarding land bodies, he said: “Now they are talking about Donbas, but Donbas is now … 79 % is owned by Russia and its control.”

Read more: Follow the war in Ukraine with maps

Before the start of the war in the East in 2014, the wealthy mining zone in Ukraine in Donbas formed about 16 % of Ukraine’s economic output.

It was reported that Putin told Trump that he wanted the entire Dunpas region as part of a wide peace deal.

It will certainly provide a large amount of blood and treasure.

Zelinski said he also argued about the percentage of the White House map that showed Russian control in a number of Ukrainian regions, which ranged from 99 % of Luhansk and 76 % of Donetsk in Donbas; 73 % of Zaporizhzia and Kheson in the southeast; 4 % in Kharkiv in the northeast; And 1 % in Sumi and Meclav.

An analysis of the latest data from the US -based war institute has led to its numbers similar to the White House, and any differences that could retreat to a different methodology used, especially over the Russian control of the region. The part can be under limited control or just claimed by Moscow.

In the areas where the White House suggests that 1 % of the region is under Russian control, this may only reflect that the Russians have some limited presence, as in mykolaiv in the south, or where they were largely repelled, as is the case in SUMY in the north.

Whatever the real number of Russian control in Donetsk, the cities of the castle in Kamurorsk and Slovinsk adjacent in the Donetsk region are still home to the senior population.

Local officials say about 242,000 people live in Ukrainian -controlled areas in the Donetsk region, and no Ukrainian head of state is thinking of handing their lands to Moscow.

Although Russian forces have made progress in recent months, ISW estimates that the seizure of the rest of the Donetsk region “is very likely that Russian forces will take several years to complete after several difficult campaigns.”

Zelinski said that the Ukrainian map showed by Trump showed it in the last 1000 on the last day, Russia managed to occupy less than 1 % of the Ukrainian lands.

Analysts of the Maping Deepstateua group in Ukraine said that a translation into 5,842 square kilometers since November 2022.

While Russia has achieved operational success during the early days of the comprehensive invasion, Deepstate indicates a large percentage of the occupied territories that have been liberated.

However, Russia has made an indisputable progress in two months to three months, even if the confrontation line has not changed on a wider scale since the first months of the war.

Defense analyst Conrad Mozica, who heads Rothshan consultant, says Russian progress has been clearly accelerated in some areas of the East around Kobansk in the Kharkiv and Karimina area in Luhansk.

“We are witnessing more fires and Ukrainians are not really able to spread enough firefighters to put them out,” he told the BBC.

Muzyka cited a lack of Ukrainian workforce to defend a long front line, as well as Russia’s use to increase drones targeting soldiers and their equipment, especially their artillery.

Meanwhile, Russia managed to employ between 30 to 35,000 soldiers, and even with the severe losses they were exposed to on the ground, they managed to build a large operational and strategic reserve forces.

But Russia’s rapid gains in the limited areas of the east have not yet matching elsewhere.

One of them tried to try Russian territory from 10 to 15 km to the Ukrainian -controlled lands near Dopropilia in the Donetsk region successfully by the Ukrainian forces last week, according to military leaders in Ukraine.

Although Russia holds some pockets of land in the Sumi and Correvis regions, Ukraine still controls an estimated 6600 square kilometers of Donbas.

Not only has Putin demanded large areas of Ukraine, as it has already included four regions as well as the Crimea, although many areas are far from hand.

The UK defense intelligence update was recently estimated that only based on “the progress of the battlefield in Russia so far in 2025”, it will take only 4.4 years to seize the areas of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaburisia and Khairsson.

This alone explains Trump and Zelinski’s views when it comes to maps that show the 1200 -km front line in Ukraine.

“Thank you for the map, by the way, it was great,” Zelinski told him despite their differences, “I am thinking about how to recover it.”