Why Ukrainians, hardened by war, will take the fight to Russia if Donald Trump betrays them

Yet there’s no other word but dreich for Kyiv right now. Fog, icy rain, death from above courtesy of Moscow, and the pervasive sense of abandonment throughout the half-empty city.

It’s not just the thousands who’ve left the city, the empty flats and bombed-out apartment blocks; Ukraine’s capital is well aware that it has been abandoned by the West. If only the Ukrainians could stop being so inconvenient and lay down before the ravenous bear; after all, then we could stop hearing about that terrible war.

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Russian economy starting to collapse

US President Donald Trump’s plan will not create peace, it will merely set the stage for the next stage of the war by buying Russia time. Even if some of its key points are altered, it remains a Moscow wish list, taken almost verbatim from Kremlin press releases.

Handing over territory controlled by Ukraine to Russia would condemn its inhabitants to terror. It would also hand over fortifications that would take months or years to overcome while the Russian economy runs white-hot from stress.

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You have to understand that Russia’s economy is beginning to collapse, it cannot continue to maintain its current course in Ukraine. It’s had to start selling its gold reserves, it’s not able to make bonus payments to new army recruits, and resource wars are breaking out amongst senior officials, reminiscent of the chaos of the 1990s.

Russia is getting weaker by the day at home and can only inch forwards on the battlefield. It could be broken; stronger sanctions on its oil industry and utilising its assets held by European countries could tip the balance.

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West still giving billions to Russia

Instead we get limited sanctions with exemptions for countries like Hungary and pussyfooting over those Russian assets, while many EU countries continue to buy Russian oil and other products. Last week, Sweden’s foreign minister Maria Malmer Stenergard revealed Europe has spent $142 billion more on Russian energy and oil than on supporting Ukraine.

Trump’s peace plan is often compared to the 1938 Munich Agreement but it’s far worse. The aggressor is already involved in a war of genocidal conquest; the Americans are going out of their way to reward Russia; the Europeans continue ostrich-necking.

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Small wonder the mood in Kyiv is so dreich. The West is ready to divest itself of troublesome Ukraine, and the country’s leadership is embroiled in another corruption scandal, involving energy supply of all things, in a country of daily blackouts.

Casual observers often make the mistake of assuming that President Volodomyr Zelensky has an unparalleled hold on popular support, that his superstar reputation in the West translates domestically. He does not and, while the furore over the ‘peace plan’ has taken the heat off him, corruption in his government remains a problem.

New leaders to emerge?

I asked a friend of mine, someone who’d lost loved ones in the war what should happen to the ministers involved. Lampposts and ropes was the answer, one shared with many.

The anger in Ukraine is palpable. What do you say to someone who fought in the war, grieves for dead relatives and devoted his entire business to military production, only for his cause to be brought down by corrupt politicians and Western spinelessness? There are thousands like that in Ukraine, hardened by the war.

If this betrayal is forced on Ukraine that constituency will not be silent and leaders will emerge to lead it. Halting American military supplies would be devastating but it would also mean that Washington loses control of what and whom Ukraine targets, and what more would there be to lose?

If Washington stops the supplies, it loses its ability to restrain Ukraine from striking deep within Russia. This isn’t due just to Trump’s administration, Joe Biden was reportedly furious about the famous sinking of the Moskva in 2022 as it represented an “escalation”.

The nuclear option

With nothing left to lose, why wouldn’t Ukraine aim to decapitate Russia’s leadership, strike Moscow with domestic-made rockets, or target Russian state organs abroad? It already has the capacity to make nuclear weapons; if it is abandoned, it may have little choice but to produce them.

This is mild, compared with what those hardened by the war tell me. They are angry, want revenge for Russian atrocities, and are furious about what they see as a looming betrayal. I can’t blame them.

Kyiv has been a home for me in one way or another since 2014. I was there during the Maidan revolution, when the Russian invasion truly began with the occupation of Crimea.

What people reading this may not understand is that it was never about maintaining the Ukrainian state but rather its society, one that is so vibrant, so engaged with a sense of purpose that it puts our moribund community to shame.

To our shame

Ukraine will endure even if it’s completely abandoned by the West, as it has done for centuries through other periods of Russian oppression. It is to our shame we have learned nothing from history, and we’re ready to abandon another Eastern European country to another imperialist aggressor as we did in 1938.

The other night I walked down Khreshchatyk Street in Kyiv, its main boulevard lined with Stalinist-era buildings. A street usually teeming with life was empty, my only company the vacant expression of the occasional drunk clutching plastic bottles of beer.

My path took me towards Maidan Square to a memorial where thousands of flags, Ukrainian and others are laid out, each remembering someone who’d fallen in the war. Cold, mist hiding the tops of the buildings, the flags swayed silently in the dark.

Dreich. For once used correctly.

Andrew Sweeney is a correspondent for Polish news network TVP World