Politico reports:

Handing over massive fortification lines to an expansionist neighbor hellbent on destroying your state tends to be a bad idea.

In 1938, ceding the Sudetenland and its dense network of forts, forests and trenches led to the rapid collapse of Czechoslovakia’s ability to defend itself against Nazi Germany. There are fears in Europe that Kyiv’s ability to resist Russia will be similarly devastated if Donald Trump — swayed by Russian President Vladimir Putin — presses Ukraine to hand over key defensive lines in its eastern Donbas region.

This danger was uppermost in Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s mind as he met with Trump in Washington on Monday following the U.S. president’s meeting last week with Putin. While Trump may see a slice of the Donbas as a bone to throw to Putin to secure a deal, Zelenskyy knows such a concession would undermine any peace deal and position the Russians to charge further into the heart of Ukraine.

“It is crucial for Europe not to turn this into another Munich or Yalta moment,” Tomáš Kopecký, Czech government commissioner for the reconstruction of Ukraine, told POLITICO, referring to the Western betrayal of the Czechs at the Munich summit of 1938, and the selling out of Central and Eastern Europe to Joseph Stalin at Yalta in 1945.

Trump reportedly said he believed Putin would agree to a peace deal ending the war if Ukraine hands over the whole of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces in the east; Russia occupies almost all of Luhansk and three-quarters of Donetsk.

A defiant Zelenskyy has said he won’t do that.

“We will not leave Donbas. We cannot do this. Donbas for the Russians is a springboard for a future new offensive,” Zelenskyy told journalists in Kyiv last week.

Military analysts also warn that any concessions in Donbas could have devastating consequences on the battlefield. [Continue reading…]