Putting Ukrainians look at how Trump and Putin meet for talking in Alaska

Five thousand miles from Alaska, and feeling left, Ukrainians on Friday were invested in the results of the negotiations for which they were not invited.

Negotiations between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin will start later without a place for the Ukrainian president of the Loladimir Zelensky.

Trump signaled earlier this week that “earthly swaps” can be on the table – largely interpreted to mean the surrender of Ukrainian land to Russia.

In Ukraine, where polls consistently show that about 95% of the population is distrustful to Putin, there is a difficult combination of deep skepticism about negotiations and deep fatigue with the war.

“This question touches me directly,” said Tetiana Beamnova, 30 years from Pokrovsk is one of the eastern cities, the future of which is referred to Russia.

“My hometown is on the fire line. If the active fights stop, I will be able to return?” she said.

The issues of the negotiations, the substitution of the land, the redoration of the borders were deeply painful to those who grew up in the affected regions, I Bystanov said.

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

French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday that Trump has agreed At the call with European leaders that no territorial concessions will be made without the approval of Ukraine. And Trump said he intends to hold a second summit with Zelensky’s gift before something is agreed.

But Trump may be unpredictable. Often, he is said to be preferred by the person he spoke with recently. So there is little belief in Ukraine that it will not shake Putin, especially in the meeting one.

The very fact of the meeting with the closed doors was a bad for Ukraine, said Oleksandr Meretsko, Ukrainian MP and Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs of the country. “Knowing Trump, he can change his mind very quickly. This is a great danger.”

Meretsko said he was afraid that Trump’s desire to consider as transactions, he may have made preliminary agreements with the Russians privately. “Trump does not want embarrassment, and if nothing is achieved, he will be ashamed,” the MP said. “The question is what can be in these agreements?”

Different opportunities for arrangements were offered that could lead to ceasefire: from the freezing of the current fronts – without the official recognition of the confiscated territory as a Russian – to the maximalist position of the Russian annexation of four whole regions in eastern and southern Ukraine.

Surveys suggest that about 54% of Ukrainians maintain some form of compromise of the Earth to accelerate the end of the war, but only with the security guarantees from the international partners of Ukraine. The distrust of Russia is so deep and widespread that many believe that the freezing agreement without safety guarantees will simply be an invitation to Russia to rest, the rear and resolution.

“If we freeze the front -line front and give in to the territory, it will only be a platform for a new offensive,” said Volodimir, a Ukrainian sniper, which serves in the east of the country. In accordance with the military protocol, he asked him to identify only his name.

“Many soldiers have given their lives for these territories for the protection of our country,” Lodzimir said. “The consolidation will mean that the demobilization will begin, the wounded and exhausted soldiers will be thrown, the army would decrease, and during one of these rotations, the Russians will strike again. But this time it will be the end of our country.”

Throughout Ukraine, people from all walks of society have made very rigid decisions about the reality of their future, said Anton Hrushetsky, director of the International Institute of Sociology of Kiev, who regularly pollutes the population about the war.

One of the most difficult decisions was to make the idea of giving actually control some Ukrainian land in Russia, he said. “This is 20% of our land, and it is our people. But Ukrainians show us that they are flexible, they tell us that they will take different forms of security guarantees.”

According to the Institute polls, 75% of Ukrainians are completely opposed to the provision of official property to any territory. Among the other 25%were some people who were pro -Russian, Grushetsky said, and some who were just tired of the war that they believed that hard compromises were needed.

“I suppose that the war should be stopped in any way,” said Loubov Nazarenko, 70 years old, a pensioner factory worker from the Donetsk region, in the east of Ukraine.

“The farther it goes, the worse it gets,” she said. “The Russians have already occupied the Herson region and they want Odessa. All this needs to be stopped, so the youth does not die.”

Nazarenko has a son who is not yet fighting but can be called. She said she believed that three years in the war with hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded only on the Ukrainian side, preserving life replaced all problems about the land.

“I just don’t want people to die,” she said. “Not youth, not old people, not civilians living on the frontline.”

On Friday, when the clock was celebrated before the talks in Alaska, the Ukrainians celebrated the Holy Day – the day of assumptions about the Blessed Virgin Mary. This is a day when she is believed to listen to the prayers of all who need it.

In the monastery of St. Michael, a church in Central Kiev, priest Alexander Leaders were leading over several dozen people. Subsequently, he said it was difficult to find the words to describe the injustice of the closest negotiations, but called it “great injustice and madness” to leave Zelensky.

Like others, the priest recognized the gloomy reality facing Ukraine, he said – that he was unable to return his stolen territory by force. Therefore, it was necessary to conclude a deal. But it is necessary to think about the smaller from the point of view of the earth, said it clouding and more in terms of people.

“If we are forced to yield to the territory – if the world allows it – the most important thing is that we collect all our people. The world must help us pull out people.”

In his prayers on Friday, the priest did not directly address the negotiations in Alaska, he said: “No names and places of meetings.”

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