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What is the Donbas?

The Donbas, named after the Donets River and its coal basin, covers an area larger than Switzerland and represents about nine percent of Ukraine's whole territory.

The region has been at war since the start of a Moscow-backed separatist insurgency in 2014.

It is hard to assess how many people live there now but according to the last pre-2014 census from 2001, the population stood at about six million in the two regions.

The Donbas is a traditionally majority Russian-speaking area, though many Ukrainian speakers live there as well.

According to the US-based Institute for the Study of War, Russia holds around 80 percent of the Donetsk region and almost all of the Lugansk region. 

The fortress belt

The Russian advance is threatening Ukrainian fortifications in the Donetsk region that Kyiv has been consistently building up since 2014.

The ISW said Ukraine has built a "fortress belt" stretching from the towns of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk in the north down to Kostyantynivka and Druzhkivka in the south.

The Donbas also has a special meaning for President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose grandfather fought in the Soviet army in the area against the Nazis in 1943, as did many other Ukrainians. 

The Donetsk region has also seen some of the war's bloodiest battles against Russia, such as in Mariupol, Bakhmut and Avdiivka.

Resources 

Historically, the Donbas has been known for coal mining and industry but another type of resource there is gaining attention.

The region is rich in raw minerals, such as lithium, uranium, titanium and rare earths, but many of them remain untapped in the occupied or embattled territories.

In May, Washington and Kyiv signed a minerals deal that allows the United States to exploit Ukraine's rare earth and other deposits.

What's next? 

Giving up Donbas could have devastating consequences for Ukraine's future security.

It "would open the gate to a future deeper invasion of Ukraine," said Andreas Umland, a Kyiv-based analyst from the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies.

The terrain and the flat landscape on the region's border are poorly suited for fortifications, according to ISW. 

Ceding it would put Ukraine in "a position that is significantly less defensible than the current line," it said.

Emphasising the strategic nature of the Donbas for Ukraine, Zelensky summed it up, saying: "It is a matter of our country's survival".