Ukrainians’ hopes and concerns as Trump presidency approaches

Anastasiia Fedchenko, 36, moans in anguish; His agony echoes off the golden walls of St. Michael’s Cathedral in kyiv.

She sits with her hands resting on either side of her stomach. She is heavily pregnant with her first child, a girl. Her husband, Andriy Kusmenko, is a few centimeters away, dressed in uniform and in an open coffin.

The navy commander was killed in combat in eastern Ukraine on January 4 of this year. Now and always he is 33 years old. While Andriy was fighting in the war, Anastasiia was writing about it as a journalist.

His brothers in arms file past, dropping red roses on his coffin. As the funeral prayers come to an end, Anastasiia leans forward and gives one last kiss to the “love of her life.”

Outside the cathedral she pays tribute to her “most handsome husband”, who died for his country.

“I regret that my daughter will never see her father,” he tells the BBC, “but she will know that he was a soldier, an officer, and that he did everything he could to make Ukraine exist for her and for other generations.”

“This war will last as long as Russia. I really fear that our children will inherit it from us and will have to go fight.”

Not according to Donald Trump, who claimed he could end the war in one day and returns to the White House next week. He is already pushing for peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.

This would dishonor the dead, according to Sergeant Dmytro, badged “Smile”, who fought alongside Andriy and came to the cathedral to mourn him.

“Let the people in power decide, but I don’t think those who fell want them (Ukraine’s leaders) to sit around the table,” he says.

“After the funeral we will return to work. We will fight for every Ukrainian who fell.”

Many here believe – like Anastasiia and Dmytro – that too many Ukrainians have been killed to try to reach a deal with Russia. But public opinion is changing and others believe there is too much death and destruction not to reach an agreement.

As Ukraine endures its third winter of war, one word is rarely spoken here: “victory.”

In the early days of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, we heard it everywhere. It was a rallying cry for a nation suddenly faced with columns of enemy tanks. But the past is truly a strange country… and one with more territory.

Moscow now controls almost a fifth of its neighbor (including the Crimean peninsula, captured in 2014) and says any peace talks must take that into account.

The Ukraine of 2025 is a place of cold and harsh realities, where cities are emptied, cemeteries are filled, and many soldiers abandon their posts.

Six hours by car from the capital, in the heart of Ukraine, a young soldier is in the dock.

Serhiy Hnezdilov, a burly 24-year-old, is locked in a glass cubicle in a crowded room in the city of Dnipro. He is being tried for desertion and is one of many.

Since 2022, around 100,000 cases have been opened against soldiers who left their units, according to data from the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine.

When Hnezdilov went AWOL, he made public his demands for a clear deadline to end military service. He says he is willing to fight, but not without a demobilization plan. He has already served for five years, including two before the full-scale invasion of Russia.

“We must continue fighting,” he told me during a pause in the hearing, “we have no choice.”

“But soldiers are not slaves. Anyone who has spent three years or more on the front line deserves the right to rest. The authorities have long promised to set the conditions of service, but they have not done so.”

In court he also complained of corruption among commanders and deadly incompetence.

After the brief procedural hearing, he was handcuffed for the trip back to prison. If convicted, he faces up to 12 years in prison. “Let’s help Ukraine,” he told us as he was taken away.

Many other Ukrainian soldiers are still testing every nerve on the front lines, trying to at least slow the Russian advance.

Mykhailo, 42, the chain-smoking commander of a drone unit, fights every night fueled by “Non-Stop,” a Ukrainian energy drink.

He is with the 68th “Jaeger” Brigade, fighting to hold the eastern front line town of Pokrovsk, a key transportation hub. The Russians are approaching from two sides.

Mykhailo takes us to a Ukrainian position, a journey we can only undertake at night and in an armored vehicle. The Russians also have their eyes set on the sky. Their drones are a constant threat. He is alert and tired.

“The first few days I went to the enlistment office,” he tells us, “and I expected everything to go quickly. Honestly, I’m tired. The casualties are few (in his case, a total of 40 days in three years). The only thing that “My saving grace is that I can video chat with my family.”

We arrive at a disused house where Mykhailo and his men unload their equipment and set up a pop-up drone position. The screens are brought in and the cables are connected.

Outside, troops erect an antenna taller than a two-story building. They work quickly under torchlight, using red rays, not white, as they are harder to detect. They then assemble bombs to arm their “vampire”, a large attack drone.

For the next few hours, we’ll have front-row seats as Mykhailo, call sign “Admin,” pilots the drone, his eyes flicking from screen to screen. First, he drops supplies on the frontline Ukrainian troops and then launches an anti-tank mine on the Russian forces underground. It moves slightly away from its target.

It faces strong winds and Russian interference. Keep an eye out for approaching enemy drones at all times.

Mykhailo detects a Russian fighter plane in the sky. Minutes later we heard the thud of three Russian gliding bombs. “It’s far away,” he tells us. This means that they are two or three kilometers away.

During a pause, I ask Mykhailo if he thinks a peace agreement is possible. “Maybe not,” he says. “This (Putin) is a completely unstable person, and that is putting it very mildly.”

“I hope that at some point the enemy will stop because he is tired, or that someone in his right mind will come to power.”

He will not comment on President Trump.

While Mykhailo is a veteran of this war, one of his men is a beginner. Twenty-four-year-old David joined last September as the Russians approached his hometown. Now he is dedicated to handling explosives, although he would prefer to be at university learning languages.

“No one knows how long the war will last,” he says, “perhaps not even the politicians.”

“I would like this to end soon so that civilians don’t suffer and people don’t die anymore. But considering how things are now on the front line, it won’t be soon.”

He believes that if the guns are silenced, it will be just a pause, before Moscow comes back for more.

The winds get stronger and the vampire drone lands. He’s out of action for now. The unit packs up and leaves as quickly as they arrived. They will return to action as night falls, resuming the duels in the sky.

But on the ground the Russians continue to advance little by little, and Trump’s presidency will mean pressure to reach an agreement. And here’s another hard truth: if it happens, it’s unlikely to be on Ukraine’s terms.

Additional reporting by Wietske Burema, Goktay Koraltan, Anastasiia Levchenko and Volodymyr Lozhko.