Anne Applebaum

There are now several versions of this kicking around, so I'm going to be a little vague.

But all are some of Russia's, of the occupied territories of Ukraine.

So that's Crimea, that's eastern Ukraine, Donbass, Luhansk, and maybe some of the other territories too.

But more than that, it asks the Ukrainians to give up Ukraine.

territory that has not been conquered.

So this is a part of Donetsk.

Donetsk is a province of Ukraine.

The Russians have conquered part of it.

In fact, they conquered a lot of it in 2014 as a part of a surprise attack right after they occupied Crimea.

And they've really been trying to conquer this whole province since then, so 11 years.

And they haven't been able to do it.

And they're now losing, again, I spoke to someone last night who reminded me of these numbers.

They're now losing 15,000 to 20,000 people a month trying to conquer Donetsk.

And that's, I guess, that's killed and wounded.

But that's still 15,000 to 20,000 soldiers being knocked out every month in order to conquer this piece of territory that they can't conquer.

And what they want is they want the Trump administration to intervene and give them this territory for free.

And this is not only controversial because it rewards the Russians for nothing, but also it's probably politically impossible.

I don't think President Zelensky could stay in office.

He can't stay in office and just turn over this piece of land.

It's right now very heavily fortified land.