‘Not optimistic’: In Ukraine, scepticism surrounds peace talks 

Kyiv, Ukraine – Snizhana Petradkhina, a 34-year-old florist, pulled her hands from her thick puffer jacket to reveal two thermal hand warmers.

“These are saving me today,” she said, standing beneath a flickering portable lamp in her stall in an underpass leading to a Kyiv metro station. “I am tired of feeling cold, and I am tired of no light. But all of Ukraine is tired of war. We want our children to have quiet nights – no drones, no explosions.”

Russia has repeatedly attacked Ukraine’s energy infrastructure this winter, causing mass power cuts in the Ukrainian capital, during a bitter cold snap that has left many residents without electricity and running water.

But war fatigue had long set in. Ukrainians barely react to the multiple air-raid sirens that ring out every day.

The conflict that began at breakneck speed almost four years ago, gripping the world’s attention, has gradually ground down into a brutal war of attrition.

And while Ukrainian, Russian, United States and Emirati officials struck positive tones after talks on Friday and Saturday in Abu Dhabi, saying they marked a first step towards peace, there was a large measure of scepticism on the ground.

“I don’t think the war ends tomorrow,” Igor Novikov, a former adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said from his trendy office overlooking Kyiv’s skyline. “Any conversation to end the war is better than silence, [but I am not] optimistic in the short term.”

The war can only end under two circumstances, he said. Either “Russia, as the aggressor, decides it wants the war to end, or enough pressure is placed on Moscow to force that decision”.

Neither of those options, he said, is likely to materialise until spring when Russia will have completed this phase of targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure during the winter months.

He said Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to wear people down and sow “domestic chaos” but added that although people are exhausted, Ukraine has repeatedly shown an ability to adapt.

The US-brokered meeting in the Gulf state ended without a breakthrough.

“A lot was discussed, and it is important that the conversations were constructive,” said Zelenskyy, who sent Ukraine’s chief negotiator, Rustem Umerov, military intelligence head Kyrylo Budanov and other officials to the meeting.

“The central focus of the discussions was the possible parameters for ending the war. I highly value the understanding of the need for American monitoring and oversight of the process of ending the war and ensuring genuine security.”

He said further meetings could take place in the coming days, “provided there is readiness to move forward”.

Before the second day of talks, Russia sent more than 100 drones towards Kyiv along with missiles in an attack that lasted throughout the night, forcing people to venture out in pitch darkness to seek shelter in the metro system.

‘I have decided to go to the front line’

Maksym Fomin, a 20-year-old barman who is preparing to fight for Ukraine, said that when the war began, everything felt frightening. Now, he feels numb to its horrors – from Russia’s repeated attacks on energy infrastructure to its deployment of its new Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile, which travels at five times the speed of sound.

He said he has little hope in foreign powers.

“After four years of war, I have decided to quit my job and go to the front line. Young people should defend the country and take back our land,” said Fomin, who is from Poltava, a central city 300km (200 miles) southeast of Kyiv.

Katarina, a 37-year-old resident of Poltava who asked that her surname not be used, said that at the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, feelings of unity surged across Ukraine.

Her neighbours would regularly help one another, bound by a strong sense of community, but recently, heated arguments have broken out as they squabble over who gets to use a generator during hours-long blackouts.

“People are getting really tired now. We have had enough. We want a normal life we can enjoy, and it is normal to want that,” she said.

‘Ukraine does not have allies – it has partners’

Oleksandr Khara, head of the Centre for Defence Strategies think tank in Kyiv, dismissed the Abu Dhabi meeting, saying “real talks” would require genuine Russian will for negotiations.

He said Russia sees itself in a position of strength with little incentive to change course as it advances, albeit incrementally, on the battlefield and as US President Donald Trump’s tone towards Putin remains warm.

Without concessions from Russia, he added, Ukraine has no incentive to compromise.

“Both sides are playing a game to keep the US engaged,” he said.

When it comes to global support, Khara said Ukraine “does not have allies – it has partners” – the most reliable of which have often been smaller states, such as Poland, the Baltic countries and the Nordic nations.

The current US administration, he said, is not a “rival” but an unreliable partner due to repeated delays in assistance and Trump’s soft approach to Putin.

Back in the cold, dimly lit Kyiv underpass, Petradkhina said people outside Ukraine struggle to understand two demands many hold simultaneously, even when they appear contradictory.

“I want this war to end. I want my child to be safe. I want to be able to take the lift to our 23rd-floor apartment, to swim in the Black Sea again,” she said. “But I also cannot accept giving up land that so many people died defending. That may be hard for others, even Europeans, to understand, but that is how I feel.”