Frayed hopes

Tetiana Vitchynova, 53, is watching the current Ukraine-Russia peace negotiations with dread. The new grandmother, who has a teenage son still at home, lives as a refugee in Warsaw, Poland, where she teaches classes online and tries to make ends meet—all while observing a diplomatic game she fears will end without respect for Ukrainian interests.

The war has proved costly for Vitchynova’s family, like so many others. A native of Horlivka, a now-occupied town in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, Vitchynova lost a nephew in April 2022—the second month of a war that peace negotiators are trying to keep from the four-year mark.

Like millions of her fellow Ukrainians, Vitchynova doesn’t want to accept a peace by any means convenient for outside powers.

“I can’t even call these peace talks, sorry,” Vitchynova told me. “I don’t remember Roosevelt negotiating with Hitler.”

When asked about morale among the Ukrainian diaspora, the teacher described the moment in similarly bleak terms. It feels like the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion all over again. “But the hope is far less,” she said. “And the understanding of horror is far greater.”

Vitchynova’s feelings are common among Ukrainians amid the ongoing blitz of diplomatic activity. In late November, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met in Geneva, Switzerland, with a Ukrainian delegation headed by Andrii Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff. The group whittled the U.S.-backed peace plan from an original 28 points down to 19. In early December, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff traveled to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Various officials claimed to have achieved a measure of progress. But decisive movement toward peace remains elusive.

Jakub Parusinski, director of the Kyiv-based political consultancy KI Insights, put Ukrainian sentiments in simple terms.

“The peace feels very unjust, the way that it was presented in the 28-point plan,” he told me.

But Ukraine’s internal political dysfunction isn’t helping the diplomatic sprint. On Nov. 28, less than a week after meeting Rubio in Geneva, Ukraine’s Yermak resigned following a raid on his home in connection with a corruption scandal. The case centers on a $100 million kickback scheme for politically connected contractors in Ukraine’s energy sector. The country’s media have likened Yermak and his alleged associates to a band of thieves, calling them “Ali Baba and the 40 Statesmen.” Observers describe the kickback affair as the biggest scandal of Zelenskyy’s presidency.

Ordinary Ukrainians are outraged that malfeasance has continued among Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt political class, while Russia bombards the infrastructure that struggles to keep providing power and heat to Ukrainian homes during a fourth wartime winter. Russia has continued its strikes throughout this year’s multilateral talks.

“Most people are pretty furious” about the kickback scheme, said Parusinski. Amid constant power outages, which can last for hours and disrupt online learning for children, news of energy-sector corruption “feels like a real stab in the back,” he added. And for “anyone with children, it’s a complete disaster.”

Military and diplomatic losses in December heaped further pressure on Ukraine’s people and politicians. Russian forces officially claimed the eastern town of Pokrovsk, long teetering away from Ukrainian control. In Europe, a once-unifying plan to seize as much as $200 billion in Russian financial assets for war reparations risks unraveling, after opposition from leaders in Belgium, where most of the assets are held by the Euroclear financial group. Belgian officials have expressed fears of Russian retaliation, while Ukraine faces a cash crunch in the next several months.

And in the United States, President Donald Trump released his National Security Strategy on Dec. 5. The 33-page plan includes this note about Ukraine: “It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities.”

The same day, the White House released a statement on U.S.-Ukrainian negotiations—with a sharp word on Russia’s lack of sincerity in peace work so far.

“Any agreement depends on Russia’s readiness to show serious commitment to long-term peace,” it said.

Gordon “Skip” Davis, a former U.S. Army major general, who’s now a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), considers the current status of the peace plan stable, despite a “muddled start” with a “one-sided approach” that did not do enough to incorporate Ukrainian or European priorities. Yet Davis puts little stock in a substantial resolution soon.

“I don’t believe Russia really wants peace,” he said. “I think we’re pretty far away from a peace agreement at this point.”

Davis compared the Ukraine situation with his experience implementing the Dayton peace accords. Those agreements, led by the administration of U.S. President Bill Clinton, ended war in the Balkan region of southeast Europe, 30 years ago. Davis said getting to a Ukrainian peace would require agreeing to terms, establishing a ceasefire, and seeing to its enforcement—all of which might take years.

And those steps assume good faith on all sides, including Russia. The ongoing negotiations, for all their activity, have not shown sincere postures from each interlocutor.

The latest U.S. security strategy renews the possibility of U.S. involvement in, or at least near, a postwar Ukraine. The Trump administration’s new language might enable a future U.S. position much like the one today: not American troops on Ukrainian ground, but military vigilance in the European countries belonging to NATO, as well as other, bilateral, agreements with the United States.

“To play a role, [U.S. peacekeeping forces] would certainly have to be fairly close” to Ukraine, Davis said, and use an “eyes-on” strategic approach, like intelligence gathering and surveillance by satellite.

The former major general said he “wouldn’t be surprised” if Ukraine and its partners relied on various NATO force structures to help enforce a future peace agreement.

Amid so much talk and so little progress, Ukraine’s 2026 outlook offers little reason for optimism. Ordinary Ukrainians like Vitchynova, reeling amid the war’s ongoing effects, see much more on the line than the dollars-and-cents costs of peace and rebuilding.

“The American side is made up of businessmen,” she said. “They can negotiate over things that can be measured in dollars. But what’s at stake are intangible assets. And that’s the main barrier” to Ukraine’s peaceful future, she added.