Ukrainian land Russia set to lose mapped as Trump shifts stance on war

On Tuesday Trump signaled a shift from his prior stance that Ukraine would have to make land swaps ahead of a peace deal.

After meeting Zelensky on Tuesday Trump said that he believes Ukraine can win the war and take back all the lost territory.

The remarks are a shift from his earlier stance that Zelensky "doesn't have the cards", arguing that time is not on Ukraine's side and that Russia is winning the war. He also urged Zelensky to make territorial concessions to Russia to reach a deal that would end the four-year-old conflict.

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"After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form," Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social account shortly after meeting Zelensky.

It seems like the U.S. president envisages a possible future in which Ukraine can reclaim tens of thousands of square kilometers of lost territories, including the illegally annexed region of Crimea (annexed before the war began in 2022).

Reuters reported in August that Russia controls nearly 44,600 squares or 19 percent of Ukraine, including Crime which was annexed in 2014 and a chunk of land in the east and southeast of the country.

If the U.S. president was referring to territory captured since the war broke out in February 2022 this would include land Russia seized during the initial months of the war. It was followed by advances in the oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, which Moscow claims to have annexed but does not fully control.

Initially Russia captured over 45,000 square kilometers of land, including areas near Kyviv and large parts of the south and east.

Then, Ukraine reclaimed significant ground in Kharkiv and Kherson oblasts during counteroffensives.

Between November 2022 and August 2025, Russian forces only captured 5,842 square kilometers, or less than 1 percent of the country, according to open-source intelligence outfit, DeepState, Newsweek reported.

The outlet also said that on November 12, 2022, 108,651 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory were under Russian occupation and as of August 17, 2025, 114,493 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory had been captured.

An analyst said that Melania Trump likely contributed to Donald Trump's changed opinion on the Ukraine-Russia war.

"There are forces within the Trump camp that do support Ukraine. One of them is Melania Trump. Melania Trump really believes. She's very affected by the issue of Ukrainian children. Russia has kidnapped more than 20,000 Ukrainian children", Melinda Haring, Eurasia specialist at the Atlantic Council and senior community engagement advisor at Rasm for Ukraine, told France 24.

Haring added that Melania talks to her husband about Ukrainian children and that the first lady's best friends are all Ukrainian Americans.