Kyiv, Ukraine – Thin, glistening optical fibers stretch through the branches of trees in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, sometimes extending for kilometers. These fibers were—and in some cases still are—attached to Russian drones, making them resistant to radio-electronic jamming.
Some of these drones have been shot down, but others remain operational, posing a constant threat.
“When someone passes by, they just fly up and attack,” Oleh, a military officer deployed in eastern Ukraine, told Al Jazeera. “That’s why if you see the fibers, you’d better destroy them immediately to protect yourself.”
Oleh and his unit are far removed from U.S. President Donald Trump and his stalled peace plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war, which has faltered under Moscow’s growing list of conditions.
A ceasefire seems a distant prospect, as talks between U.S. negotiators and Ukrainian and Russian officials have yielded no tangible results.
“We pinned some hopes on Trump initially,” Oleh said. “But when nothing happens the first, second, or third time, we just stop paying attention.”
Oleh is less concerned about the talks and more focused on practical matters: a functioning water heater in his quarters, the chance to see his wife in Kyiv, and the dwindling number of drone operators in his unit.
After more than three years of gradual territorial losses and devastating manpower shortages, particularly in the eastern Donbas region, few Ukrainian men volunteer to fight. Those who are conscripted undergo brief training and are sent to the front lines as stormtroopers, with low chances of survival.
“I have an order to recruit people, but I don’t know where to find them,” he said. “I need people who are at least somewhat motivated, who know where they’re going, who understand they could be rounded up on the street to become a stormtrooper but choose to come here instead.”
Some potential soldiers prepare by mastering wartime skills to improve their chances of survival, but their numbers have declined as Trump’s loud yet fruitless promises of peace have had a demoralizing effect.
“We’ve got very few civilian students,” said Andriy Pronin, a pioneer of drone warfare in Ukraine who runs a school for aspiring drone operators in Kyiv. “Everybody thinks the war is going to be over soon.” Most of his cadets these days are seasoned servicemen, he added.
Many servicemen feel betrayed when they learn of yet another concession Russia has secured from Trump.
“We’re like a devoted wife. We’re the last to find out about the husband’s infidelities,” said Ihor, a military officer in the Black Sea port of Odesa. Odesa is dangerously close to the occupied southern Kherson region and the annexed Crimean Peninsula, from which Russian drones and missiles attack the city almost daily.
“What we hear about the peace talks is nothing but rumors,” he said.
Last week, Trump imposed tariffs on 185 nations—but excluded Russia and its closest allies, Belarus and North Korea. The White House also lifted sanctions on Kirill Dmitriev, one of the Kremlin’s key negotiators on Ukraine, who visited the White House for two days of low-profile talks.
Kyiv-born and U.S.-educated, Dmitriev manages Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and is reportedly connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to Reuters, Dmitriev’s wife, Natalya Popova, is a “deputy to Katerina Tikhonova, one of Putin’s daughters, at a foundation which works with Moscow State University where they both studied.”
In televised remarks on Sunday, Dmitriev complained that there is “still a large number of Russia’s enemies in the U.S. government” and decried a “total disinformation” campaign that excludes Moscow’s viewpoint.
Halyna Vanytina has firsthand experience of Russia’s “point of view.” A Russian drone crashed into an apartment building in her neighborhood in Kharkiv on Thursday, killing a 12-year-old girl, her parents, and a neighbor, while wounding 34 others. The explosion shattered windows in hundreds of nearby apartments, including Vanytina’s.
“Trump and Ukraine live in different universes,” she told Al Jazeera. “He talks about friendship with Putin while we go to bed dressed and keep our documents in fireproof boxes.”
Russian forces have been repelled several times in their attempts to seize Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, which lies just 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Russian border and is vulnerable to daily shelling.
‘No lull ahead, no ceasefire’
To Kirill Sazonov, a Ukrainian political analyst turned serviceman, the failure to negotiate a Trump-proposed ceasefire is linked to Putin’s obsession with seizing as much Ukrainian land as possible for a domestic public relations victory.
Putin aims to continue a ground offensive until autumn, hoping to break through Ukrainian defenses and claim the “title of a great conqueror and the gatherer of Russian lands,” Sazonov wrote on Telegram on Monday. “So, we have no lull ahead, no ceasefire with a gradual transition to stable peace,” he wrote. “But we will withstand the way we did in 2022.”
Another serviceman deployed in the Donbas region said that after multiple injuries and hospital stays, he is left with nothing but determination and dark humor.
Mykola, a 38-year-old civil engineer who spent two years in the trenches, said he does not want to see Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy humiliated by Trump and forced to sign away Ukraine’s natural resources.
The only way to prove Ukraine’s resilience, he said, is to keep targeting advancing Russian forces. “There is going to be a lot of fieldwork,” he told Al Jazeera.
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