Ukrainian serviceman Vyacheslav thought the U.S. president may assist in bringing an end to Russia’s three-year war in Ukraine on Kyiv’s terms when he returned to the White House earlier this year.
After seven months, that optimism has diminished. Many on the front lines are concerned that the negotiations may result in concessions, particularly over territory, only days before Trump’s planned summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska—a summit that noticeably excludes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
In accordance with military regulations, Vyacheslav, 36, only provided his first name, saying, “There’s no hope now, only a sense of anticipation.”
For 22-year-old soldier Dmytro, giving up land is intolerable. Nothing will change if you trade land, he continued. Russia will only have more time to reorganize and steer clear of the blunders it made at the beginning of 2022.
In the initial months of the invasion, Russian soldiers took control of sizable territories, but they eventually lost most of that territory to strong Ukrainian opposition. Dmytro declared, “We may never get everything back, but we’ll fight for every piece of our land, for our future.”
Don’t trust them.
This year, Ukraine and Russia have undertaken several rounds of direct negotiations in Turkey, but little real progress has been made. While Kyiv refuses to cede land and insists that Moscow be pressed to terminate the war by force and sanctions, Russian forces are still advancing.
Zelensky wrote on social media on Tuesday, “We see no signs the Russian army is preparing to stop the war.” Instead, they’re taking actions that allude to fresh offensives.
Oleksiy Vadovychenko, a TV producer in Kyiv, stated that he has no expectations for the Alaska meeting. We’ve had plenty of conversations, but none of them have yielded tangible outcomes, he claimed.
Even blunter was Natalia, a 65-year-old pensioner from Pokrovsk, an eastern Ukrainian city under Russian encirclement: I don’t believe either of them—not Trump, not the Russian fascist. That’s all.
Another resident of Kiev, Valentyn, expressed a common concern: even if Trump negotiates a truce, Putin will take advantage of the quiet to reassemble his army and launch another attack. “Any peace will be short-lived,” he stated. The attacks are going to start up again in a year or two, possibly three.
