DNIPRO, Ukraine: “Why is everyone putting their hopes in Trump?”
Liudmyla Parybus isn’t holding her breath for the incoming US president to end the war in Ukraine.
“I don’t put any hope in him,” the 20-year-old student told Reuters in Kyiv city centre. “In the end it depends on us.”
Her sense of scepticism is shared by many Ukrainians who have scant faith in Donald Trump’s promises to swiftly strike a peace deal after he enters the White House on Monday (Jan 20).
“Our fate is in our own hands,” said Marharyta Deputat, a 29-year-old sales manager. “We can’t rely on anyone else.”
Hanna Horbachova, 55, isn’t pinning her family’s future on a negotiated end to the conflict, which has ground on for almost three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The owner of a thriving bakery business was forced to flee her home in the Donetsk region a decade ago after fighting erupted between the Ukrainian government and Russian-backed militias in eastern Ukraine and two internationally brokered peace deals subsequently collapsed.
She doesn’t rule out abandoning her new home of Dnipro if Vladimir Putin’s large Russian army continues to creep towards the southeastern city.
“He will not stop in the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia or Dniptopetrovsk region,” she told Reuters amid the crackling of fried dough in her bakery. “He will go further.”
While sceptical about the chances of a deal, she nonetheless believes the new American president has an outside chance to become a global peace icon if he delivers on his pledges.
“Trump has the opportunity to go down in history as a saviour of a huge nation,” Horbachova said.
Indeed, not everyone dismisses the prospect of Trump helping speed a ceasefire; following his election, more than a third of Ukrainians believe the war will end by the close of 2025, according to a poll of around 1,100 people by research company Gradus Research in December, up from about a quarter six months earlier.
That poll found that 31 per cent of respondents expected the war to go on “for years” and another 31 per cent said it was difficult to say.
Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, also said Trump could cement his legacy by bringing peace and security to Ukraine.
“Ukraine needs to become a success story for Trump,” Merezhko told Reuters. “He can enter history as a winner.”