No quick peace signs for Trump in Ukraine

Russians and Americans are talking again, since European leaders and diplomats contemplate the difficult decisions that the president of the United States, Donald Trump prevents them.

Without a doubt, Trump’s diplomatic ultimatum to Ukraine and the allies of Western Europe of the United States has deciphered the transatlantic alliance, perhaps beyond repair.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is shaken by the steep change of attitude from the White House, although some of his many critics at home say he should have seen him come. Long before winning re -election, Donald Trump made it clear that Joe Biden’s policies were not going to continue.

When he arrived in Turkey on his last trip, Zelensky deplored the fact that negotiations to end the war were occurring “behind the key parts affected by the consequences of Russian aggression.”

But he feels very far from the room with air conditioning in Saudi Arabia, where Russian and American delegations faced each other through a wide and highly polished mahogany table, to the cold of the northeast of Ukraine.

In military excavations and bases here in snow peoples and forests on the border with Russia, Ukrainian soldiers are continuing business as usual: fighting against war.

In an underground bunker on a forest base somewhere near Sumy, a Ukrainian officer told me that I didn’t have much time to follow the news. As for him, Donald Trump’s decision to speak with the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, was “only noise.”

The commander, who asked to be referred only by his call “White” signal has more pressing issues to consider.

Ignoring the diplomatic bomb that has shaken western leaders, as well as its own president, is probably the right thing for a battlefield officer who prepares to take his men back to the fight. They will soon cross Kursk, to meet with the fight to maintain the land that Ukraine has seized from Russia.

As a condition of access to Ukrainian soldiers, we agree not to reveal precise locations or identities, except to say that they are in the border lands of the city of Sumy, and all part of the continuous struggle of Ukraine in Kursk.

In a small room in a workshop hidden in a town there was a formidable sample of assassination power on shelves made of chiller -boiled planks underpinned by wooden ammunition boxes.

On the shelves there were hundreds of drones, all made in Ukraine. Each costs around £ 300 ($ 380). The soldiers who were checking them before packing them in cardboard boxes to send them to Kursk’s battlefields said that when they are armed, and flown by an expert pilot, they could even destroy a tank.

One of them, called Andrew, was a drones pilot until his leg was flown. He said he hadn’t thought about what the Americans had said here, but none of them trusted President Vladimir Putin.

His drones had destroyed a Russian armored unit that advanced in broad daylight through a snow -covered frozen field. They showed us the video. Some of the vehicles that hit were flying the red banner of the Soviet Union instead of the Russian flag.

Sumy is occupied enough during the day, with open and well supplied stores. But once it darkens, the streets are almost deserted. Air Raid alerts come frequently.

The anti -aircraft guns shoot on the sidelines in the sky for hours, aimed at the waves of the Russian drones that cross the border near here to attack the much deeper objectives within Ukraine, and sometimes in Sumy.

A large block of floors has a three -story height hole. Eleven people were killed here in an attack of Russian unmanned aircraft makes a fortnight more or less. Since then, the block has been evacuated since engineers fear it is so damaged that it could collapse.

It is part of a home of identical monumental blocks built during the Soviet era. The residents who still lived next to the shattered and insecure building were doing their affairs, walking towards the stores or their cars, wrapped against the intense cold.

Mykola, a 50 -year -old man, stopped to talk while walking home with his little son. He lives in the next block to which the Russians destroyed.

I asked him what he thought of the idea of ​​the peace of Donald Trump in Ukraine.

“We need peace,” he said. “It is necessary because it makes no sense in war. War does not lead to anything. If you look at how much territory Russia has occupied so far, so that the Russians finally arrive at kyiv, they will have to continue fighting for 14 years. It is only the people who They are suffering.

But it was not worth having a deal, Mykola believed, would arise from Putin and Trump sitting together without Zelensky and the Europeans.

Yuliia, 33, another neighbor, was going to his Jack Russell. He was at home when the Russians attacked the block of floors next door.

“Everything happened just after midnight, when we were about to go to bed. We listened to a strong explosion and saw a massive red flash through our window. We saw this horror. It was very scary.

“Many people were outside. And I remember that there was a woman hanging out, she was shouting for help, we couldn’t see her immediately, but she was finally saved from the rubble.”

Peace is possible, she believes, “but they must stop bombarding us first. There can only be peace when they stop doing that. It must come from their side because they began this horror.

“Of course, you can’t trust Putin.”

As the last rays of the sun disappeared, Borys, a Colonel Spry and Erect with retired 70 who served 30 years in the Soviet army stopped on his way. His son and grandson, he said, are in uniform fighting Ukraine.

“Peace is possible,” he said. “But I really don’t believe in that. I think justice will prevail for Ukraine. You have to be cautious.

“While Putin is there, you can’t trust the Russians. Because they believe in it as if it were a religion. You will not change them. You need time.”

So what is the answer: still fighting or a peace agreement?

“Ukraine needs to think about peace. But we should not give up. I don’t see any point. We will resist until we are stronger. Europe seems to be ready to help us. It simply makes no sense to surrender.”

Donald Trump, a man who seems convinced that the principles of a real estate agreement can be applied to end a war will discover what peace is much more complicated than simply obtaining a high fire and deciding how much land he maintains each side.

President Putin has made it very clear that he wants to break the sovereignty of Ukraine and destroy his ability to act as an independent nation.

Whether the president of Ukraine, Zelensky, has a seat at the conference table of President Trump, will not agree with that. Making a peace that lasts, if possible, will be a long and slow process.

If Donald Trump wants a fast peace dividend, he should look elsewhere.