Russia will have to dictate Ukraine's security policy and receive the Donbas for there to be peace, according to propaganda media, which also falsely claims that Poland has agreed to territorial concessions.
NEWS: Ukraine will be able to station military bases and missiles belonging to other countries on its territory if all issues related to the conflict settlement are reduced exclusively to Donbas, the former Prime Minister of Ukraine, Mykola Azarov, has said. According to him, even if the Donbas borders are agreed upon, the rest of the territory under the control of the Ukrainian leadership will remain hostile toward Russia and free to host any military bases.
“For example, the documents will read: no placement of NATO bases on Ukrainian territory. Well, it won't be called a base, but an instruction and training center, and missiles and everything else will be deployed there”, the politician said. Previously, the spokesperson for the President of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Peskov, said that peace negotiations regarding Ukraine will become complex and painstaking after Russian military personnel reach the administrative borders of Donbas. Previously, Poland made an appeal for Zelenskyy to accept territorial concessions.
NARRATIVES: 1. A Russian-Ukrainian agreement regarding Donbas is not enough for a lasting peace, because Ukraine will remain hostile toward Moscow. 2. Russia has the right to dictate not only the status of Donbas, but also the policy of the entire Ukraine. 3. Poland supports Ukrainian territorial concessions to Russia.
PURPOSE: To legitimize Russia's demands for control over Ukraine's security policy. 2. To shift the discussion from Russian aggression to the alleged hostility of Ukraine. To describe surrender as a peace solution. To present the concession of Donbas as a done deal.
Facet: The only real barrier to a lasting peace is a possible relaunch of Russian military aggression against Ukraine.
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: The article is based on a speculative statement by Mykola Azarov, a former Ukrainian prime minister who fled to Russia and was sentenced to 15 years in prison for high treason. According to the politician, if a potential settlement of the Russian-Ukrainian war were limited to the Donbas, the rest of Ukraine's territory would become an open space for Western bases, missiles and military infrastructure. The text promotes an alarmist hypothesis intended to justify the idea that Russia must continue the invasion. Furthermore, Azarov suggests that Moscow would somehow be forced to continue the war, occupy other territories and push the front further and further back to eliminate an alleged existential threat coming from Ukraine. In fact, Ukraine would need real defense mechanisms against a new Russian aggression.
The article deliberately confuses Ukraine's right to security guarantees with a perceived threat to Russia. First of all, Ukraine is not part of NATO, but is a partner of the Alliance. Secondly, NATO's founding documents define the Alliance as a collective defense system designed to protect the security of member states in the face of an attack, not for aggression against Russia. NATO reappeared at the center of European security concerns not because it threatened Russia, but because Russian aggression brought the risk of the war expanding in the region back to the forefront. Moreover, Russia's military behavior in ex-Soviet space (from the military presence in Transnistria to the war against Georgia, the illegal annexation of Crimea and the war of aggression against Ukraine) shows who the true source of insecurity in the region really is. Russian aggression against Ukraine, condemned by the UN General Assembly, has also produced the strategic effect opposite to what Moscow expected. Finland joined NATO in 2023, and Sweden in 2024, which extended NATO’s borders to the vicinity of Saint Petersburg. Under these circumstances, claiming the occupation of more Ukrainian territories to “push NATO infrastructure back” from Russia means using security rhetoric as a pretext for military expansion.
Pro-Kremlin media shifts the discussion from a possible ceasefire as the first step toward lasting peace to demands regarding Ukraine's entire security framework. This is exactly the logic of the Kremlin's position in recent years: the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from Donbas, withdrawing from any alliances, disarmament and a change of political power. In other words, Donbas is used as a starting point for a much broader line of demands, which includes limiting sovereignty and Ukraine’s surrender.
The reference to Poland's position is also misleading. The article does not cite any Polish official or government document, but an opinion expressed by Leszek Miller, the former Prime Minister of Poland from 2001–2004, who no longer holds any executive power at present. In an interview, Miller said that, in his opinion, Ukraine should accept territorial concessions to stop people from dying. This does not mean that “Poland demands territorial concessions”. On the contrary, the official position of Polish leaders is that no one should pressure Zelenskyy into agreeing to territorial concessions and that there can be no recognition of Russia's right over territories conquered by force. Therefore, the article takes an individual statement and transforms it into an alleged European validation of the Kremlin's territorial claims.
The narrative reverses the relationship between aggressor and victim. Instead of discussing the withdrawal of Russian troops and an end to hostilities, the propaganda shifts the focus to Ukraine's alleged obligation to limit its military and political power so as not to disturb Russia. President Zelenskyy rejected this idea, stating in February 2026 that the war cannot end with the partition of Ukraine. Therefore, Moscow's demands go further than Donbas, to include Ukraine's withdrawal from territories not occupied by Russia and the replacement of the political regime with one controlled by the Kremlin. It is not about territorial compromise, but about the very existence of the Ukrainian state. Russian propaganda attempts to transform the subject of Donbas into a discussion about the subordination of Ukraine. The real message is not that the settlement cannot be limited to Donbas, but that Moscow does not accept the existence of a sovereign Ukraine, capable of deciding its own future and defense model. It is not about a peace formula, but about imposing a strategic surrender under the pretext of conflict settlement.
BACKGROUND: Mykola Azarov served as Prime Minister during the period of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. After the collapse of that regime, both fled to Russia. Azarov can no longer be presented even formally as a Ukrainian political voice. On December 3, 2025, a Ukrainian court sentenced him in absentia to 15 years in prison, while seizing his assets, after finding him guilty of high treason, actions aimed at the violent change of the constitutional order, an attempt on the territorial integrity of Ukraine, and the justification of Russian aggression. Under these circumstances, he is not a neutral source of analysis, but a former official exiled in Russia and integrated into the Kremlin's propaganda mechanism.
Check sources:
