Ukrainian Junior Sgt. Valerii Hladii has been a tank operator for a third of his life. He expects to remain one for the rest of his days.
That’s because the 30-year-old has no trust in Russia, and he places little faith in diplomatic efforts led by the United States to secure a ceasefire or a broader peace that stops the bloodshed in his country.
“I try to not watch all that [diplomatic] stuff because it just makes me upset,” he says, sitting atop his tank in the shade of camouflage nets just west of Pokrovsk, a strategic city in eastern Ukraine. “There have been a lot of agreements since 2014. They changed nothing for us. We still have this war.”
Why We Wrote This
The White House is eagerly pushing peace talks for Ukraine, with the Kremlin showing halting interest. But on the front lines of the war, Ukrainian soldiers have little faith in the process, and feel it is up to them to safeguard their country.
Among Ukrainian soldiers, the dominant sentiments these days are dismay and determination: dismay at what they see as U.S. President Donald Trump’s misguided efforts to cut a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Ukraine, and determination to prevent more Ukrainian land – and people – from coming under Russian occupation.
Relentless pressure
Control of Donbas – the site of some of Ukraine’s largest coal reserves and steel plants – has long been a strategic goal for Russia. Moscow frames its campaign in this resource-rich area, which began during a Russian-backed rebellion in Luhansk and Donetsk in 2014, as a bid to protect Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
Since the launch of its full-scale invasion in 2022, Russia has inched closer toward achieving this goal. Unlike other parts of the country where the intensity of war waxes and wanes, eastern Ukraine has known no respite from the thud of artillery, the roar of missiles, and the hum of drones. The situation has become even more precarious since Washington scaled back its military support for Kyiv.
Sergeant Hladii’s tank is a trophy captured from the Russians during the September 2022 Kharkiv counteroffensive. His brigade was slated to receive Bradleys, U.S.-made armored fighting vehicles, this year. Part of an aid package approved by former President Joe Biden, the Bradleys would have helped offset Russia’s advantage in troop numbers. But delivery delays and a shift in U.S. political winds have left Ukrainian soldiers like Sergeant Hladii waiting – and exposed.
The absence of major military breakthroughs by either side mirrors the diplomatic impasse. Rather than accepting the 30-day ceasefire suggested by Washington in March, the Kremlin opted to impose limited truces on its own terms. On April 28, Mr. Putin declared a “humanitarian truce” to take place from May 8 through May 10, coinciding with Russia’s Victory Day commemorations.
Such gestures are met with a mix of skepticism and resolve by Ukrainians in uniform. Pvt. Ihor Osmachko of the 68th Jaeger Brigade put it bluntly amid violations of an Easter truce: “We should not stop. We should not give time for these diabolical forces to regroup, gain more strength, and attack us again. Putin cannot be swayed through ceasefire attempts and negotiations. The only thing that can work is maximum pressure. No ceasefire is going to last.”
The soldier also conveys a sense of betrayal over past international guarantees. “We gave away our nuclear weapons in the ‘90s in exchange for guarantees,” says Private Osmachko. “Look what happened. Now we’re being asked to give up territory in exchange for guarantees. What’s the point of all this? The main guarantee we can have is weapons. The whole world needs to understand that Russia is a terrorist state. It needs to be isolated and defeated.”
Ukraine is in no position to mount major counteroffensives. But front-line commanders are determined to hold defensive lines and claw back territory where they can, day by day, mile by mile.
Ukrainian optimism, against the odds
A senior lieutenant who identified himself only as Anton, formerly employed on the London Stock Exchange, is proud that, against the odds, Ukrainian forces have managed to recapture four settlements in the Pokrovsk region since February. He estimates 10 Russian soldiers were killed for every Ukrainian fatality.
“The enemy is trying to cut off Pokrovsk through drone warfare,” he says, sitting at a desk in the underground headquarters of the First Separate Assault Regiment, where a series of screens captures the drone battles in the skies. “The fact that we have been here rather than there since February shows that they’ve had some success.”
Still, he is optimistic, crediting creative Ukrainian military engineers and brave infantry with keeping Russian forces in check. Part of that optimism reflects the expectation that Ukraine will be able to ramp up its own arms industry and that partners in Europe will boost military supplies, filling some of the gaps left by the U.S.
A key challenge now, he says, are Russian fiber-optic drones, low-altitude devices that remain connected to their operators by fiber-optic cables that spool out as they advance. They have become a major headache for Ukrainian soldiers, allowing Russian forces to carry out pinpoint reconnaissance and kamikaze strikes while slipping past electronic warfare defenses.
“The situation is hard but under control,” says a captain code-named Perun in the same regiment. “We try to solve the problem by producing our own fiber-optic drones, but we are not at the same level.”
Everybody agrees that ammunition and personnel are in short supply. But in the assessment of infantry intelligence officer Andrii, a senior lieutenant who did not want to give his full name and who goes by the nom de guerre of Chrome, what Ukraine needs most are long-range weapons. He recalls the days when he could pick up the phone and simply say “launch” to activate U.S.-provided High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS. That is no longer possible.
“We know where [Russian troops] are, how many they are, but we cannot hit them,” he says with a clear sense of frustration. “I have 100% intuition that the enemy is at the edge of its possibilities, too. The level of the infantry they deploy is very low.”
