Like many Ukrainians, Victoria Kadantseva is wary of the recent flurry of diplomatic activity – happening overseas from Miami and Geneva to Moscow and even Alaska – which she believes could be crucial to Ukraine's future.
“We don't expect a good outcome when they discuss the future of our country in all these places, as if it's their right to decide,” said Ms. Kadantseva, an executive assistant in the Kyiv office of an international consumer goods company.
“We don’t want to give up our territory and lose our sovereignty,” she adds, “but that seems to be what they’re talking about.”
Why did we write this
While American and Russian negotiators met and European leaders fought to make a peace deal acceptable to Kyiv, Ukrainians sadly witnessed negotiations about their future. But their point of view is firm: “Yes” to compromise, “No” to capitulation.
Since August, when US President Donald Trump met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, Ukrainians have watched – mostly in awe – the ups and downs of Trump's new efforts to end Russia's war in Ukraine.
Just in the last few weeks, the 28-point plan that appeared to be written by Moscow has given way to a 19-point plan more favorable to Ukrainian interests.
Most recently, Ukrainians watched warily as Trump's peace envoys, businessman Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, met with Putin in Moscow on Tuesday. However, the Russian leader reportedly stuck to his maximalist stance on ending the war.
This allowed Ukrainians to breathe a small sigh of relief (that there was no grand agreement between the American and Russian powers), even as it strengthened the prospect of the war continuing through another cold winter and into the new year.
“People in Ukraine feel like we are on an endless rollercoaster, up and down, up and down, and sometimes all this talk about our country comes out with very bad news, and sometimes something more positive,” says Valeriy Pekar, a Ukrainian futurist and adjunct professor at the Kiev-Mohyla Business School. “But mostly people are afraid that there will be some kind of agreement on Ukraine without Ukraine.”
“Russia is not ready”
Negotiations, this time between the Americans and Ukrainians, were to continue on Thursday in Miami. But Mr. Pekar says he believes President Trump's latest peace efforts will fail because Mr. Putin is not willing to negotiate an end to the war.
“Negotiations require two sides, it takes two to tango, but Russia is not ready,” he says. “Negotiations mean compromises,” he adds, “but Putin cannot compromise because he knows he will face very serious pressure from many sectors within the country.”
President Trump used the same language Wednesday, sounding frustrated as he discussed with White House reporters the lack of progress in the latest talks to end the war.
“It takes two to tango,” Trump said. “I don't know what the Kremlin is doing.”
According to some Ukrainians, what Russia, and Mr. Putin in particular, is doing is sticking to the position he has held since the start of all-out war in February 2022: Ukraine simply does not exist as an independent state.
“Ukraine has been fighting for its sovereignty for the last 500 years, and this clash with an empire that will erase us continues today,” says Dmitry Zolotukhin, Ukrainian manager of a European humanitarian NGO in Kyiv.
“Now Putin is telling Americans that there is no need to talk to Ukraine’s political leaders because Ukraine does not exist.”
Howard Lafranchi/The Christian Science Monitor
Given that position, Mr Zolotukhin says he believes the war will continue into next year – perhaps until Mr Putin feels the pressure of the huge economic losses the war is taking on Russia.
Important anniversary
That the latest peak of diplomatic activity over the war occurred this week has struck some Ukrainians as ironic, since Dec. 1 is a symbolic date in the country's long struggle for independence.
Thirty-four years ago this week, Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly for their independence in a national referendum. Independence was declared by the then Soviet parliament on August 24, 1991—now considered the country's Independence Day—but it was the December 1 referendum that added popular legitimacy to the declaration.
The day took on added significance in 2013 with the start of the Revolution of Dignity on December 1, which culminated in February 2014 with the removal of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych from power and the return of the pro-Western 2004 constitution.
“December 1 is important to us for two reasons,” Mr. Pekar says. “First of all, this is the day in 1991 when Ukrainians voted en masse for independence,” he says. Across the country, about 90% of voters said yes to independence, with approval reaching nearly 84% in the industrial Donetsk region along the eastern border with Russia.
Donetsk is a region now largely occupied by Russia, which Mr Putin has said should be declared entirely Russian as part of the conditions for ending the war.
“But this is also the day, in 2014, when Ukrainians rose up and declared that we will not go back and give up an independent Ukraine,” Mr. Pekar says. “This is a reminder that we still have to fight for independence today.”
Kristina Kormilitsyna/Sputnik/Reuters
For some, Ukraine's long history of victories and defeats in its quest for independence from a hegemonic power helps explain why Ukrainians today are so wary of peace initiatives that appear to be carried out by foreign powers on their behalf. Too many security agreements have come and gone, too many foreign leaders promising protection but then reneging on their commitments.
“Ukrainian sociologists call us a distrustful nation,” says Vladimir Fesenko, who heads the Penta Group consulting firm in Kyiv. “We have historical reasons to mistrust – and that is why we cannot accept “promises” and “assurances”, but we need what we agree on with our partners to be specific.”
Mr Fesenko says the grueling war has left Ukrainians with a deep sense of weariness and a willingness to make some compromise – but not on such a core principle as national independence.
“People have come to the conclusion that we will have to make compromises, but they still insist that we maintain the dignity of the sovereignty that our soldiers fought and died for,” he says.
“So as we watch these negotiations, we are left with a troubling ambiguity: we want the war to end, and we want efforts to end it to succeed,” he says, “but we also refuse to see it end not just in compromise, but in capitulation.”
Alexander Naselenko supported coverage of this story.
