During peace talks, Ukrainian officials reportedly put forward an unusual proposal: renaming part of the Donbas region “Donnyland” in honour of Donald Trump.
According to the Kyiv Independent, citing a New York Times report, the name was intended as a play on Donetsk, Donald and Disneyland.
Sources quoted by the US newspaper said the idea was partly humorous, but also reflected an attempt to appeal to the US administration and encourage a tougher stance against Russia.
Applying a Disneyland-style name to what the Times described as “a depopulated, decimated swath of Ukrainian coal-and-steel country” may seem striking. The authors argued that this reflects a new global reality in which governments seek to appeal to Trump’s vanity in order to secure US support.
The proposal reportedly concerned an area in the north-western Donetsk region. It also included the idea of a “Peace Council” linked to Trump that would help administer the territory, although neither Ukraine nor Russia would be members. The suggestion did not make it into any official documents and yielded no tangible results for Kyiv.
Courting Trump: A Broader Political Pattern
The episode was presented as part of a broader pattern. At the Abu Dhabi talks, Ukrainian officials were said to be following a trend seen among other global figures seeking to gain favor with Trump.
Examples cited included former Apple chief Tim Cook, who reportedly presented Trump with a custom glass statuette on a gold pedestal, as well as Elon Musk, who had previously gifted him a Cybertruck featuring Trump’s likeness. In 2018, Poland considered naming a planned US military base “Fort Trump” during the presidency of Andrzej Duda.
Similarly, when Armenia and Azerbaijan reached a peace agreement after decades of conflict, a proposed trade corridor near Iran’s border was informally dubbed the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity”.
Meanwhile, negotiations over the future of Donbas continue. Russia is pushing for Ukraine to withdraw from areas it still controls, a scenario President Volodymyr Zelensky has firmly rejected, insisting Kyiv will not cede either strategic territory or its population.
Trump, who campaigned in 2024 on ending the war in Ukraine “within 24 hours” of taking office, has spent more than a year attempting to broker a deal between the two sides. So far, those efforts have failed. The closest the parties came to an agreement was in April 2022.
Recent rounds of talks have produced limited outcomes, largely confined to exchanges of prisoners and the remains of the fallen. Ukraine also faces the risk of slipping down the US foreign policy agenda amid the ongoing conflict with Iran. This has been one factor behind Zelensky’s diplomatic outreach to Gulf states and efforts to secure new strategic partnerships.
(mja, sab)