CNN β Could a ceasefire deal be a disaster for Ukraine in disguise? That is the urgent question echoing in Ukrainian frontline bunkers and in the ruins of besieged towns, where ubiquitous exhaustion begs for peace, but where a costly learned distrust of Russia rules. Anxiety is manifold. Would a ceasefire hold? Would Russia just use it to re-equip and attack again?
Would Moscow even want it, given it is fast winning ground? Now, across the eastern front, ceasefires called a decade ago that provided little but cover for further Russian military advances are living proof of the urgent need for caution at the negotiating table. The pace of its encirclement is startling and, once it falls, Russia will have few major settlements between its forces and the major cities of Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia.
Hope is a key currency here, and one facet of it, consistently raised by Ukrainian officials, is the idea of European or NATO troops providing security guarantees to Kyiv through their specific presence in frontline areas β as peacekeepers of sorts. Keith Kellogg, in a policy paper from April. Because Russia β no matter how much they say that they are not afraid of anyone β are afraid of America, are afraid of NATO as a whole.
The threat of Russian drones is so acute, artillery units can be reached when the sun tips into the horizon, and the light is vanishing. A unit commander who escorts us checks his handheld monitor to see if the Russian surveillance drones have left. Peace is something here you better be deadly serious about, and the men who live underground are skeptical about. The other side is winning, taking territories. And we, by and large, have nothing to say. The growing candor of troops who would months ago repeat only studied assurances of victory is replicated by some exhausted civilians from frontline towns.
Slowly trudging through the ravaged streets of Lyman is Larissa, 72, her gold incisors bright among the shell-peppered concrete. All my three brothers are buried here, all my aunts, uncles, dad, mum. But it was clean and there was some hay. Her hopes are with the Kremlin as the decision-makers.
