The Ukrainians sidelined consider that Trump and Putin meet for discussions in Alaska

Five thousand kilometers from Alaska and feeling excluded, the Ukrainians were preparing on Friday for the outcome of the negotiations for which they were not invited.

The talks, between American president Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, will start later in the day without a seat for the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Trump reported earlier this week that “land exchanges” could be on the table – widely interpreted as signifying the surrender of Ukrainian land to Russia.

In Ukraine, where polls systematically show that around 95% of the population is wary of Putin, there is a worried mixture of deep skepticism on talks and deep fatigue with war.

“This question touches me directly,” said Tetyana Bessonova, 30, of Pokrovsk – one of the eastern cities whose future is in question if the earth has been returned to Russia.

“My hometown is on the line of fire. If the active fights stop, could I come back?” She said.

Questions for negotiations, land exchanges, restarting the limits were deeply painful for those who grew up in the affected regions, said Bessonova.

“This is the place where I was born, my homeland,” she said. “These decisions could mean that I could never go home again. That I and many others will lose all hope of return.”

French president Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday that Trump had agreed with European leaders that no territorial concession would be made without the approval of Ukraine. And Trump said he intended to hold a second summit with Zelensky present, before everything was agreed.

But Trump can be unpredictable. It is often said that he promotes the opinions of the person to whom he spoke most recently. So there is little confidence in Ukraine that he will not be influenced by Putin, especially during a head-to-head meeting.

The very closed -door meeting was bad for Ukraine, said Oleksandr Merezhko, Ukrainian deputy and president of the country’s parliamentary committee on foreign affairs. “Knowing Trump, he can change his opinion very quickly. There is a great danger for us.”

Melezhko said he feared that Trump’s desire was to be considered a job, he may have concluded agreements in private with the Russians. “Trump does not want to embarrass, and if nothing is done, he will be embarrassed,” said the deputy. “The question is that could be in these agreements?”

Various possibilities have been suggested for arrangements that could lead to a ceasefire, freezing of current front lines – without official recognition of the territory seized as Russian – to a maximalist position of Russia annexing four entire regions in the east and southern Ukraine.

Surveys suggest that around 54% of Ukrainians support a certain form of land compromise in order to hasten the end of the war, but only with the safety guarantees of Ukraine international partners. If deep and widespread is distrust of Russia, that many believe that an agreement to freeze the front lines without security guarantee would simply be an invitation to Russia to rest, rearm and recover.

“If we guess the front lines and yield the territories, it will only serve as a platform for a new offensive,” said Volodymyr, a Ukrainian sniper serving in the east of the country. In accordance with the military protocol, he asked to be identified only by his first name.

“Many soldiers have given their lives for these territories, for the protection of our country,” said Volodymyr. “A frost would mean that demobilization would begin, wounded and exhausted soldiers would be released, the army would shrink, and during one of these rotations, the Russians would strike again. But this time, it would be the end of our country.”

Throughout Ukraine, people from all walks of life made very difficult decisions concerning the reality of their future, said Anton Grushetsky, director of the kyiv International Sociology Institute, who regularly questions the population of war.

One of the most difficult decisions was whether to accept the idea of giving de facto control of Ukrainian soil in Russia, he said. “It is 20% of our land and it is our employees. But the Ukrainians show us that they are flexible, they tell us that they will accept various forms of security guarantees.”

According to the institute’s survey, 75% of Ukrainians are completely opposed to the official driving of Russia of all territory. Among the remaining 25%, there were people who were pro-Russians, said Grushetsky, and some who were simply tired by the war they felt difficult compromises were necessary.

“My conviction is that the war should be arrested in all possible ways,” said hebov Nazarenko, 70, a retired factory worker in the Donetsk region, in eastern Ukraine.

“The more it goes, the worse it becomes,” she said. “The Russians have already occupied the Kherson region and they want Odesa. All of this must be arrested, so young people do not die.”

Nazarenko has a son who does not fight yet but could be called. She said that she believed that three years after the war, with hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded on the Ukrainian side alone, the preservation of life replaced all concerns on earth.

“I don’t want people to die,” she said. “Not young people, not the elderly, not civilians who live on the front line.”

Friday, when the chronometer checked the start of talks in Alaska, the Ukrainians celebrated a holy day – the day of the hypothesis of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is the day she is supposed to listen to the prayers of all those who need her.

At the monastery of St Michael, a church in the center of kyiv, the priest Oleksandr Beskrovniy led a prayer service for several dozen people. Subsequently, he said it was difficult to find words to describe the injustice of the talks to come, but called him a “great injustice and madness” to leave Zelensky away.

Like others, the priest recognized the dark reality against Ukraine, he said-that he was unable to resume its territory stolen by force. So an agreement was to be concluded. But you have to think less in terms of land, said Beskrovniy, and more in terms of people.

“If we are forced to give in the territory – if the world allows – the most important thing is that we bring together all our people. The world must help us get our people out.”

Friday, in his prayers, the priest did not refer directly to talks in Alaska, he said-“no names or places of meeting”.

But he prayed for the future force of Ukraine, he said. “On the front line and in diplomatic space.”