‘You want a ceasefire? I want your death,’ said Russia’s chief propagandist Vladimir Soloviev during prime time television, the camera zooming in on his face. His message was aimed at both Ukrainians and Europeans urging the Kremlin to stop the war. Soloviev, alongside a chorus of other Kremlin loyalists and military experts, has lately been gloating about how Vladimir Putin weathered western pressure and secured Donald Trump on his side. There will be no peace, they say, until Ukraine capitulates to Russian demands.
Putin, as if to prove the point, announced yesterday that he had ordered the military to begin creating a ‘security buffer zone’ along the Ukrainian border – which is not quite the peace process Trump has been calling for. The zone would stretch along Russia’s Kursk, Bryansk and Belgorod regions, meaning Putin’s troops would have to break into Ukraine from the north, seizing parts of the Kyiv, Sumy and Kharkiv regions. The border, already penetrated by constant raids from both sides, will soon become the front line of a fresh invasion as Putin seeks to seize more Ukrainian land. ‘Our armed forces are currently solving this problem,’ he said after returning from Russia’s Kursk region, recently liberated from Ukrainians.
The Russian President is longing for a breakthrough on the battlefield, but his troops are bogged down in the Donetsk region, unable to deliver a single win to make Kyiv more obedient during negotiations. He’s used this strategy before. The infamous first Minsk deal was signed after Ukraine suffered a catastrophic defeat at Ilovaisk in August 2014, where hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers were slaughtered while retreating through a so-called humanitarian corridor arranged by Putin.
This time, the Russian President needs something just as big and traumatic for Ukrainians to live through. But since the fall of Avdiivka in February last year, Russian forces haven’t managed to capture a single major city. Yesterday, Putin promoted Colonel General Andrey Mordvichev, who was awarded the Hero of Russia for the occupation of Avdiivka, to Commander-in-Chief of Russia’s Ground Forces. His job now will be to replicate that success elsewhere, where Ukraine’s defences haven’t been heavily sealed with mine fields, trenches and drones.
Ukraine braces for the looming attack. Nearly 56,000 people have been evacuated from the Sumy region, while in Kharkiv more than a hundred residents are fleeing daily. Ukrainian soldiers warn of Russian forces massing near the border, with small sabotage units probing for weak spots. Ukraine’s overstretched and exhausted army will struggle to defend such a wide front. Kyiv’s best hope of averting a disaster is to secure a ceasefire, something Volodymyr Zelensky has been pushing for in recent months.
Ukrainians who once dared to hope for peace now see more war as inevitable
But with Trump walking away from the talks, urging Russia and Ukraine to negotiate directly without mediators, and his refusal to impose new sanctions on Moscow, a Russian offensive looks all but inevitable. The Kremlin keeps inventing one excuse after another for the ceasefire delay, with the latest being that Zelensky and his government supposedly lack the legitimacy to sign a peace deal. This week, Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, called for elections in Ukraine before the agreement is signed – otherwise, Moscow reserves the right to refuse to recognise its outcome. And break it, too.
Lavrov also dismissed the Vatican as a venue for the next round of talks, calling it ‘not exactly elegant’. He argued that hosting a meeting between representatives of two Orthodox countries at a Catholic venue would be ‘uncomfortable’ for the Vatican itself, despite Pope Leo XIV’s offer to host and Trump publicly supporting the idea. Moscow also opposes having any US or European representatives at the table. That leaves Putin’s lead negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, free to threaten the Ukrainian side with more war and deaths unless they concede to absurd terms: withdrawal from four regions that Russia hasn’t fully captured, shrinking Ukraine’s one-million-strong army to 50,000 soldiers, and even giving Moscow a veto over future western arms shipments to Ukraine.
Ukrainians who once dared to hope for peace now see more war as inevitable, unless Ukraine’s allies abandon their recent empty sanctions threats and come up with real ones to force Russia to accept a ceasefire. Unless that happens – and US Senator Lindsey Graham stops bragging about the largest US sanctions package against Russia and finally pushes it through the Senate – thousands more will die soon.
This piece is taken from Svitlana’s Ukraine in Focus newsletter. Sign up here.
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