Ukraine fears how Trump’s peace could be

“I have no plans for the future,” says Oleksandr Bezhan, standing next to an empty and frozen paddock where he used to work as a fisherman on the shore of the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine. “If I wake up in the morning, that’s quite good.”

Malokaterynivka is only 15 km (9 miles) north of the first line in the Zaporizhzia region of Ukraine.

If the president of the United States, Donald Trump, manages to stop the war, Malakaterynivka hopes to end on the right side of that front line.

I visited this area for the last time in 2023, when Ukraine launched a highly anticipated controvensive.

At that time, the Ukrainians dared to dream of winning this war. After all, they had won the battle of kyiv and released stripes of territory in other places.

But 18 months later, artillery exchanges similar to thunder reflect the failure of that operation and Russia’s domain.

The front line here is widely in the same place, but the wide extension of the river has gone.

When the Kakhovka dam occupied by the Russian was destroyed, this became a vast and uninterrupted extension of bushes.

The sterile surroundings reflect the frozen limbo in which he finds himself. The White House wants to end the war, but it is not as simple as to blow a full -time whistle.

“If the front line becomes an edge, it would be terrifying … the fighting could explode at any time,” explains Oleksandr.

The exposed river bed separates our location from the territory occupied by the Russian. The distant sunlight bounces in the Zaporizhzhia nuclear energy plant, in Moscow’s grip from 2022.

Ukraine and the United States want peace, but that’s where consensus seems to end.

Washington’s vision of it, along with the realities of the battlefield, means that Russia will probably maintain the land of the Ukrainian earth that has seized.

Ukraine wants significant security guarantees that would prevent invading forces from pushing on the other side of the river.

Instead, Donald Trump has denied kyiv’s dream of joining the NATO alliance while focusing on Russia.

Having observed and informed about the Ukraine struggle for more than three years, it is an especially difficult hand to receive for the country.

There are feelings of betrayal. The commentators criticize the Ukrainian President Zelensky or the new foreign policy of their largest ally.

“The border would not depend on us,” says Oleksandr. “It probably will not work, but Seoul is 30 km from North Korea, and somehow live and thrive.”

The challenge of Malokaterynivka to find a new purpose is in the heart of the future of Ukraine.

And while politicians talk about conversations, Ukrainians continue to fight and die.

The villagers gather for the funeral of a local soldier, also called Oleksandr. Half of the tombs in the cemetery are freshly excited.

The ceremony cannot last more than 25 minutes due to the threat of artillery. The mourners become and bent to cover when their comrades shoot a greeting of weapons.

“I have no hope of a high fire,” says his widow Natalya, who, however, wants him to prove that he is wrong.

“They keep sending more and more of our children in front. If they could only find any way to finish it.”

Next to the river there is a disused railway line surrounded by spike wire.

“It is to prevent Russian agents from sabotling the track,” explains Lyudmyla Volyk, who lived in Malokaterynivka all his life.

The trains used to run to Crimea in the south.

“We hope that one day will be restored,” says the 65 -year -old, optimistic. “And that day we will go to our crime.”

The eleven years of Russian occupation of the Peninsula make it difficult to imagine.

President Zelensky insists that he will not sign any agreement that does not include Ukraine, does Lyudmyla trust to obtain an agreement to protect it?

“We want to believe,” he replies after a deep breath.

If Donald Trump brings peace to Ukraine, it would be welcome in many sectors.

The possibility of uninterrupted nights, the sirens fall in silence and the soldiers who return home are longed for.

But as things are, any relief would be rapidly flooded by the questions without a answer to how the fire would remain and who would apply it.

Kyiv will see this absence of details as something to play. The problem for Ukraine is that Russia will also do so.

Additional Svitlana Libet, Toby Luckhurst and Hanna Chornous reports