About Ukraine without Ukraine

Two veteran Ukrainian soldiers reflect on the prospect of a US-brokered peace deal

Long before he even won re-election, Donald Trump promised the American electorate that he would be able to bring the war in Ukraine to an end within 24 hours, and his courting of the Kremlin in the weeks since his inauguration last month has demonstrated his determination to deliver on that promise, apparently regardless of how poor any deal he strikes may be for Ukraine.

As senior US and Russian officials prepare for their first face-to-face meeting in three years in Riyadh on Tuesday, Novaya Gazeta Europe asked two Ukrainian servicemen how they felt about Washington and Moscow beginning bilateral negotiations without Kyiv’s presence.

AFU serviceman with call sign Sniper, fighting since 2015

My fellow soldiers and I feel that Ukraine is losing the war. Many now think that a bad peace would be better than a good war. The new recruits coming to the army are from the scrap heap and don’t have the necessary courage or motivation. They’re not ready to wage real war.

The more mature, experienced fighters are utterly exhausted by the carnage that has been going on for years now. We’ve all buried so many of our comrades-in-arms. I lost three great guys in the Kursk region alone. The fact that however many Chechens or Koreans have died fighting for the other side doesn’t make it any better.

We never expected anything good would come from this president. He’s a huckster who only cares about money.

So all the guys are waiting for a ceasefire. It looks pretty obvious that there’ll be no good outcome to this war for us now. Russia has huge resources, both in terms of manpower and money, and no matter how much aid our Western allies give us, it cannot compete.

It’s going to be a real struggle for us without American aid. My battalion is armed with Soviet and Czech weapons and wears Spanish uniforms, but even so it will be very difficult to survive on European supplies alone. It will be difficult to fight without Humvees, and the US supplies shells that we just can’t do without.

So we have to listen to what Trump says. I mean, we never expected anything good would come from this president. He’s a huckster who only cares about money. For him, Ukraine is just part of a deal. Zelensky did what he could to dance to his tune, but nothing good has come of it. In fact, he’s only made matters worse by trying to ingratiate himself with him.

It would be very painful to give up territory that we’ve shed so much blood fighting to defend, But it’s important to remember that the population of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions is mostly pro-Russian as a lot of Russians moved there in Soviet times. In some of the villages there, Ukrainians account for at most 10% of the population, and almost nobody speaks Ukrainian anymore. The elderly residents are communists who spend their time asleep, waiting for Moscow to come and take them back. When they were given a chance to evacuate, they refused to leave or even to allow their children to leave. We’re on different trajectories.

An AFU officer with the call sign Kozyr, fighting since 2022

The Russians have killed many of my comrades-in-arms. My brother was maimed. He had to have a leg amputated after it was almost blown off by a mine. The Russians have raped and pillaged my country. And now they want to divide Ukraine, tear it to pieces. I hate them and will never accept a ceasefire on terms they dictate. The war can only end when the Russians withdraw from all occupied Ukrainian territories, release all Ukrainian prisoners and allow civilians they forcibly removed to return home, repair everything that has been destroyed, and pay reparations for years to come. And Putin should either be imprisoned for life or put to death. Anything less would amount to a betrayal of Ukraine and all our comrades who died in this war, a betrayal of the tens of thousands of civilians killed by Putin.

Trump is a narcissistic villain who’ll do anything to be in the spotlight. He has no idea what’s actually going on here. He quotes some crazy death toll, suddenly expects Ukraine to hand over $500 billion worth of natural resources to the US and even talks of Ukraine becoming part of Russia, which is total nonsense. The hatred Ukrainians feel towards Russians will last for generations. This is the opposite of what the US authorities told us would happen. Can one idiot simply decide to ignore the promises made by his predecessors?

It’s obvious that Putin won’t stop until he captures all of Ukraine. The Russians will agree to a ceasefire now, but in a few years Trump will be gone, and the Russians will attack again, only this time they’ll be better-prepared. Putin will do nothing that could reduce the power of the army, otherwise his military might remove him from power. So he needs the war and he needs Ukraine. They’ve both become obsessions for him.

Ukraine is able to continue its resistance without help from the US. Yes, it will be very difficult, but we will keep fighting. Remember how at the very beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022, when the Russians attacked on multiple fronts at once and enjoyed air superiority? We fought back, stopped them capturing major cities, and drove them out of the Kyiv region! And the only Western weapons we had at the time were Javelin surface-to-air missiles.

Europe will help us now, as they’re scared of Putin too. The EU has long been making us promises, but they’ve now sprung into action and are providing us with assistance, and I think they may well give us even more weapons if Trump threatens to cut off military support.