Monday briefing: What's at stake for Ukrainians as Trump and Putin talk of ceding land in return for peace

The Guardian

12 hours ago

Good morning. On Friday, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met in Alaska to discuss the future of Ukraine, but there was no deal reached and no big questions answered. Trump appeared deferential to the Russian leader and now backs plans to hand over Ukrainian territory as part of a peace deal. Today he will meet with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders.
In discussions about what a peace settlement would look like, 'land swaps' were represented as simple transactions. The fate of people appeared to be a casual afterthought. Trump and Putin are eager to embrace the idea that territory can be bought and sold like real estate, but Guardian reporting exposes the devastating part of this war: human loss.
Last month casualties hit a three-year high, with more Ukrainian civilians killed than in any month since May 2022. Our writers have been documenting the escalating human cost of this war – whole communities eradicated, schools shut, cottages silent and people in towns near fighting exhausted by sleepless nights.
For today's newsletter, I spoke to our senior international correspondent Luke Harding, who has just returned from four weeks in Ukraine, about what morale is like in these once tranquil villages now on the frontlines – and whether the Alaska summit changes anything for Ukraine. That's after the headlines.
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Luke Harding has been reporting from the Dnipropetrovsk region, which the Russians have penetrated for the first time in the last few weeks. An evacuation charity has been rescuing elderly and sick people from frontline villages swallowed up by fighting – they are usually the last to leave.
'It's about people, it's about homes, livelihoods, families, husbands, wives, children, grandparents, dogs, cats, chickens, vegetable gardens, and so on – this is what's being lost,' says Luke. 'Entire communities are being eradicated.'
This monumental loss is encapsulated by the story of Valentyn Velykyi, a 70-year-old man who lived in the small agricultural village of Maliyivka in central-eastern Ukraine. He knew everyone in his village. Once Russian troops arrived, the village's 300-odd residents fled, except Velykyi – until a missile destroyed his house and he no longer had a home to go to.
People in villages all over Ukraine have similar stories. 'There's something biblical about it,' says Luke. 'You go to these places and you see incongruously blooming vigorous gardens with flowers and marrows and apple trees where apples are falling and lying on the wayside, next to benches where people used to sit and gossip with their neighbours.' Primary schools are closed, shops are shut up, and people have fled. 'It's the extermination of a way of life – that's what it is. It's not real estate. It's human estate.'
Luke says Putin is indifferent to what happens in these areas – his priority is for them to be part of Russia. For many civilians in areas under occupation by Russia, ceding control in a peace deal would mean saying goodbye to their homes for ever.
As a foreign correspondent, Luke would go to the frontline and then return to Kyiv to write his reports, but now Kyiv is being targeted by Russian drones almost every night. 'It's really hard to sleep, and when you go out for your coffee in the morning, everybody looks exhausted.'
What do ordinary Ukrainians think about Russia?
A poll from 2014 found that 26% of Ukrainians living in the east of the country thought Russia and Ukraine should unite as a single state. But Luke says that now – apart from a very few older people – everybody supports Ukraine and hates Russia.
Since the war, Ukraine has also become more European (last month protests erupted against weakening the powers of anti-corruption agencies). 'The great irony of this war is that Putin wants to de-Ukrainise Ukraine – he wants to make it disappear, roll it back into Russia.' But he's done the opposite, says Luke, who has been travelling to Ukraine since 2007. 'Ukraine has become more Ukrainian since I've been going there.'
Shaun Walker, meanwhile, has been reporting from the city of Zaporizhzhia, an industrial hub in south-east Ukraine that has been under near-constant attack from missiles and drones. Plenty of people here and in other Ukrainian towns close to the frontline are ready for Kyiv to sign a peace deal – even an imperfect one – if it means the attacks will stop. But many others disagree, because they know first-hand what it means to give Russia control over Ukrainian territory: arrests, disappearances and the erasure of anything Ukrainian.
What does the future hold for Ukrainians?
Today European leaders will join Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the White House for a meeting with Donald Trum​p in an effort to push back on a US-endorsed 'peace plan'​.
Ukrainians understand Russia very well. They speak both languages, and they don't trust Putin, who has 'violated every previous agreement he's signed', says Luke.
Giving over land, they believe, would simply make it easier for him to advance further. 'People understand that a ceasefire would last five minutes, five days, maybe a maximum of five months, and then Putin would continue because his goal is unchanged – which is to destroy Ukraine entirely and turn it into Russia, which he considers it to be,' says Luke. 'And practically the only person on the planet who doesn't seem to understand this is Donald Trump.'
The Russian strategy is to be deliberately chaotic – targeting different areas all across the country. Fighting has increased on all fronts, with waves of kamikaze drones and ballistic missiles.
'It looks pretty bleak insofar as the Russians will continue to push forward. They have numerical advantages in terms of troops, machinery, fibre-optic drones,' he says. 'I just don't see that ending, because the Russians think they're winning … There's no incentive for the Russians to stop, and the Americans are not making the Russians stop.
'Putin's lobbying campaign on Trump behind the scenes has been extremely effective. Trump has basically shifted position in a way that Ukraine and Europe hoped he wouldn't. This has happened in two important ways: one, he now says there needs to be a comprehensive peace deal and then a ceasefire [which is the Russian position]; and two, sources suggest he has embraced the Russian land swap plan, which is that Russia gets full control of Donetsk and Luhansk as a condition for ending the war.
'What we'll see over the next few weeks is pressure ratcheted up on Ukraine to go along with this 'ceasefire plan' without very many meaningful guarantees from America,' says Luke. 'It's going to be a stormy and difficult time ahead. And what is abundantly clear – post Alaska – is that this war will continue.'
What about the fate of Ukrainians elsewhere?
There are nearly seven million Ukrainian refugees globally, with more than 200,000 in the UK.
Generally, refugees have been treated well – support for Ukraine is not a party-political issue in the UK. But there have been issues with continued housing – for example, last weekend a Ukrainian mum with two children told Luke she was being kicked out of her council flat. 'Many people opened their homes to Ukrainian refugees three and a half years ago, and now many have had to move on,' he says. Some have gone back to Ukraine.
A billion-pound budget was awarded to councils across England to help Ukrainian refugees find accommodation. Yet £327m has remained unused, despite thousands of Ukrainian refugees being homeless. 'It's fine to say, 'Oh, we're saving it for a rainy day,' but people are struggling now,' says reporter Diane Taylor, who worked on the investigation, published this morning.
While organisations such as the Ukrainian Institute London have offered free language classes, learning English remains a barrier for many refugees seeking accommodation, especially when trying to access private rented housing. Diane stressed how 'if you can speak the language, it makes life easier, even for something as unimportant as a holiday'. Experts, meanwhile, say council support 'is often a postcode lottery'. Councils have a great deal of discretion over the funds, and while many have received assistance, more and more are struggling.
The problem for Ukraine is that the longer the war goes on, the less likely people are to return. 'Mostly we're talking about women and kids,' says Luke. 'The ones in the UK are in British schools, they've made friends – they're integrating. The longer the war continues, the greater the likelihood they become British.'
Ukrainians are weary but defiant. 'They want the fighting to stop, they want the bombs to stop falling. But they don't want to hand over their homes, communities, jobs, the places where they fell in love, to the Russian enemy.'
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