Someone has already designed a flag (green and gold), while the national anthem was composed by AI. The territory is well known, 80 by 65 kilometers in eastern Ukraine. No one has yet written down the name, but everyone is already using it: welcome to 'Donnyland,' that is, that piece of Donbass disputed by Russia that Kiev negotiators are considering naming after US President Donald Trump , to curry favor with him and thus pressure him to keep that piece of border land safe from Russian hands.
It might seem at least strange to give an amusement park name to a desolate strip of Eastern European territory dotted with the rubble of four years of war, where nothing remains but a coal mine and a few scattered shops selling soldiers balloons for their visiting girlfriends.
But that's how it is: the idea of cheerfully renaming it Donnyland, which apparently started as a joke, is indeed there, and Ukrainian diplomacy is seriously considering it . If Paris is worth a Mass, they must have thought, imagine a little toponymic quirk in exchange for the end of the war. Especially since there's only a small step between 'Donbass' and 'Donnyland' and the similarity is there.
The story is told by the New York Times, which has four sources familiar with the negotiations willing to swear - under anonymity - that it is all true, and that indeed the move "reflects a global reality in which governments are leveraging Trump's vanity to gain the support of American power" .
So far, the Ukrainians haven't entirely succeeded. But at the talks, there's open talk of "Donnyland." Not in documents, let alone on maps. But in the future, who knows?
The Donbass issue, as is well known, is crucial. It is perhaps the main obstacle standing between Ukraine and peace . Since Trump and Putin's meeting in Alaska last August, Washington has not ruled out the possibility of supporting an agreement that would provide for Ukraine's withdrawal to the administrative border of Donetsk, a place so close to the front that the access highway is covered with anti-drone nets. But Ukraine insists it can defend this area and does not intend to cede it . In December, however, President Volodymyr Zelensky opened to a compromise: a demilitarized zone under the full control of neither side.
The Kremlin responded that Russia might be willing to say yes, provided the police or Russian National Guard were allowed to patrol it. But that would be unacceptable to Kiev. This is also why negotiators have begun calling the zone "Donnyland," an area they envisioned as completely uncontrolled, a "semi-autonomous mini-state" modeled after Monaco, the city-state on the Mediterranean , the NYT writes, and which Trump could present as a success. Starting with the name.
Talks, however, currently appear to be stalled, and Zelensky recently complained that Trump's Witkoff-Kushner plenipotentiary duo had visited Moscow several times but never officially visited Kiev. However, a source familiar with the talks, the NYT reports, stated that the American envoys were still waiting for sufficient progress to justify such a trip. Who knows if a nice 'Welcome to Donnyland' road sign might finally convince their Commander in Chief to put them on a jet to Ukraine and break the deadlock.