“Why is everyone pinning their hopes on Trump?”
Liudmyla Parybus is not waiting for the new US president to end the war in Ukraine.
“I don’t put any hope in him,” the 20-year-old student told Reuters in Kiev city center. “In the end, it’s up to us.”
Their sense of skepticism is shared by many Ukrainians who have little faith in Donald Trump’s promises to quickly reach a peace deal after he enters the White House on Monday.
“Our destiny is in our own hands,” said Marharyta Deputat, a 29-year-old sales manager. “We can’t trust anyone else.”
Hanna Horbachova, 55, is not betting her family’s future on a negotiated end to the conflict, which has lasted nearly three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion.
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The owner of a thriving bakery was forced to flee her home in the Donetsk region a decade ago after fighting broke out between the Ukrainian government and Russian-backed militias in eastern Ukraine, and two internationally brokered peace agreements fell into disarray. collapse.
She has not ruled out the possibility of abandoning her new home in Dnipro if Vladimir Putin’s large Russian army continues to approach the city in the southeast of the country.
“It will not stop in the Donetsk region, Zaporizhzhia or Dniptopetrovsk,” she told Reuters amid the crackle of frying in her bakery. “He will go further.”
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Although skeptical about the chances of a deal, she believes the new US president has a great chance of becoming an icon of global peace if he keeps his promises.
“Trump has the opportunity to go down in history as the savior of a great nation,” Horbachova said.
Not everyone rules out the prospect of Trump helping to accelerate a ceasefire; following his election, more than a third of Ukrainians believe the war will end by the end of 2025, according to a survey of about 1,100 people conducted by polling firm Gradus Research in December, compared with about a quarter six months ago. before.
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This survey found that 31% of respondents expect the war to continue “for years” and another 31% said it is difficult to say.
Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign relations committee, also said Trump could cement his legacy by bringing peace and security to Ukraine.
“Ukraine needs to become a success story for Trump,” Merezhko told Reuters. “He could go down in history as a winner.”
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However, the negotiating positions of the two conflicting sides remain very far apart. Trump’s advisers now admit that the Ukraine war will take months or even longer to resolve, representing a stark reality check on his biggest foreign policy pledge to reach a peace deal on his first day in office .
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has long insisted on an invitation to NATO as the best way to deter future Russian aggression; he and other officials fear that any deal short of a strict Washington alliance would allow the Kremlin to stand by and eventually counterattack.
“They will develop their military capabilities to come back,” Oleksii Reznikov, a former defense minister and peace negotiator with Russia, told Reuters. “They will want to continue what they started in 2014 and continued in 2022.”
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While Putin has said he is open to discussing a ceasefire agreement with Trump, he has ruled out making any major territorial concessions and insists that Kiev abandon ambitions to join NATO, five sources told Reuters in November.
