Russian President Vladimir Putin is pressing Ukraine to cede the entire eastern Donbas region, abandon its bid to join NATO, adopt permanent neutrality and bar all Western troops from its territory, according to three people familiar with top-level Kremlin thinking who spoke to Reuters. The demands were relayed during a three-hour closed meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Anchorage, Alaska, on 15 August, marking the first Russia-U.S. summit in more than four years. In exchange, Moscow would freeze current front lines in the southern Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions and is prepared to relinquish small pockets it holds in Kharkiv, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk, the sources said. U.S. assessments and open-source data indicate Russian forces currently control roughly 88 percent of Donbas and about 73 percent of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, amounting to one-fifth of Ukraine’s total territory. Putin’s latest position narrows earlier demands for all four provinces but maintains his insistence on legally binding limits to NATO’s eastward expansion and on Ukraine’s armed forces. Kyiv has not formally responded. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has repeatedly ruled out surrendering internationally recognised land, calling the industrial Donbas a defensive bulwark. The White House and NATO also declined to comment on the reported proposal, underscoring the wide gulf that remains more than three years into the war.