Hours before sitting down with US President Donald Trump for a meeting in the Oval Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took to his official social media profile to sound off yet another alarm against Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Addressing Putin’s demands for complete control over the Donbas region in exchange for a permanent peace deal, Zelenskyy expressed his unrelenting response as soon as he landed in Washington, DC. Confirming that he would be sitting down with Trump alongside several European leaders, the Ukrainian leader affirmed that he was wholeheartedly committed to end the war at hand “quickly and reliably.”

While he insisted on the potential peace agreement being “lasting,” he didn’t shy away from pulling out stark reminders from the history book suggesting otherwise.

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Zelenskyy: Ukrainians continue to fight for their land despite Putin’s demands to hand over Donbas

“Not like it was years ago, when Ukraine was forced to give up Crimea and part of our East—part of Donbas—and Putin simply used it as a springboard for a new attack. Or when Ukraine was given so called “security guarantees” in 1994, but they didn’t work,” he wrote on X. Zelenskyy went on to express his regret over having given up Crimea instead of holding onto the territory, as the country did with Kyiv, Odesa or Kharkiv after 2022.

“Ukrainians are fighting for their land, for their independence. Now, our soldiers have successes in Donetsk and Sumy regions,” he continued, foregrounding his confidence in Ukrainian forces’ strength to defend the country.

Zelenskyy reiterated how “grateful” his country and its people would always be to Trump, everyone in the US and every other ally who has backed them along the way.

“Russia must end this war, which it itself started. And I hope that our joint strength with America, with out European friends, will force Russia into a real peace. Thank you!” he concluded the post hours before his meeting with Trump that comes shortly after the US president’s closed-door sit-down with Putin in Alaska.

Putin’s Donbas demand and Zelenskyy’s unrelenting denial

Of the 20% of Ukraine Russia occupies currently, it has a hold over about 88% of the Donbas region in the east, deemed the industrial heartland of the country. Russia first breached it in 2014, when Ukraine also lost Crimea, resulting in Putin’s nation taking over nearly all of the Donbas province Luhansk and 70% of Donetsk. Although the overall eastern region became a part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic after the Russian Civil War.

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Thereafter, in 2014, pro-Russian separatists declared Luhansk and Donetsk as independent “people’s republics,” resulting in Moscow taking over more than a third of Ukraine’s eastern territory.

After Putin’s meeting with Trump in Anchorage, Alaska, this past Friday, it was reported that the Russian president reiterated his belief of “land swaps” being the “root cause” of the Ukrainian crisis, naming it his very condition for peace.

And so, the world has its peeled for the crucial meeting at the White House on Monday, as many expect Trump to press the Ukrainian leader to surrender the entirely of Donetsk and Luhansk (Donbas), a move that would reportedly inspire Putin to freeze the front line.

Zelenskyy’s latest tweet then re-asserts his long-held stance that Ukraine has no plans to relinquish its control over the Donbas. Only Monday’s meeting will show the way ahead.