On Saturday, I asked Andriy Sadovyi, mayor of Lviv in western Ukraine, whether he expected the Russian-Ukrainian talks in Istanbul to lead to a ceasefire. "No," he told me. Later, I asked listeners on the LVIV media forum whether any of them would like to have a ceasefire soon. About 200 journalists and editors were in the room. No one raised his hand. Many people laughed.
During the days in Lviv, I have not met anyone who thinks the Russian president wants to end the war or he will negotiate in Istanbul. Ukrainian reasoning is simple: Vladimir Putin never said that the war would end. Propagandaists on Russian state television never said they were going to end the war. The Russian negotiating team in Istanbul did not say that the war was to end. Instead, Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation, told the Ukrainians: "We fought Sweden for 21 years. How long have you been ready to fight?" (Presumably Medinsky's Great Northern War, the conclusion of 1721. Furthermore, Medinsky's most famous one is not any battlefield hero, but is aimed at rewriting school textbooks).
At the same meeting, the Russians demanded that Ukraine withdraw from Ukrainian-controlled land. Threats to annex more provinces, they have tried to do something that has not been done for three years; and insulted members of the Ukrainian delegation, who lost their nephews in the battle. "Maybe some people sitting at the table will lose more loved ones," Medinsky sneered.
The Ukrainians have found nothing surprising because they have been listening to the language for three years. They were indeed surprised by the president's tolerance for what they looked like open mockery. President Donald Trump said he hopes for peace talks. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky prepares for peace talks. The Russian president turned it into a farce, likely to commit a farce, tying Trump for as long as possible, and agreeing to more calls and meetings to avoid new sanctions, distract Russia from ongoing war crimes, and make the United States look weak.
I won't provide a full explanation here about why Trump doesn't understand the game Putin is playing, which is obvious to everyone else. I will only notice that Trump repeatedly misunderstood Putin, overestimating his alleged friendship with Putin, and often attributed to Putin's motives, which are indeed his own. "Putin is tired of all this," Trump said on Fox News. "He doesn't look good. He wants to look good." In fact, it's Trump who is tired of "this whole thing", Trump doesn't look good, and Trump wants to look good.
Meanwhile, Putin turned his entire economy to military production in the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. He created a regime that was so repressive that people were afraid to use the word war In public. He regularly sacrifices hundreds or even thousands of people to obtain 100 yards of territory. For others, this has almost no interest for him.
For all these reasons, the Ukrainians believed that the war would continue and that the prospects would no longer scare them. Part of the reason is that they have no choice. Unlike the Russians who can exit the battlefield and go home at any time, Ukrainians cannot withdraw from the battlefield. If they do so, they will lose civilization, language and freedom. Under Russian occupation, mayor Leviv and journalists at Leviv Media Forum will eventually be sentenced to jail or die, just like colleagues who were murdered and imprisoned in Russian-occupied Ukraine today.
More importantly, the Ukrainians are confident that they can continue to fight, even without the same level of American support. The Ukrainian army did not recapture territory like in the fall of 2022, nor did it plan to launch a new counterattack. But it didn't lose either. The tanks and heavy equipment needed by Ukraine are not as important as they were two years ago. Ukrainians still need U.S. intelligence and anti-missile defense to protect civilians in their cities. They still get weapons and ammunition from Europe. But on the frontline, the conflict has become a drone war, with Ukraine producing drones (over 2 million last year, probably twice as many as this year) and building software and systems to run them. In February, a Ukrainian department deployed it hopes to be the first of hundreds of combat robots. Last month, a Ukrainian sea drone knocked down a Russian plane. A brigade designed a drone that could reliably pull out an Iranian drone that killed Ukrainian civilians.
The Russians have also increased drone production, and in this sense, this war is indeed an arms race. But for the moment, Ukrainians are making up for their narrower resources with higher accuracy. In April, Ukrainian drone brigade reported hitting 83,000 Russian targets - vehicles, people, artillery, radar and other objects - 5% higher than the number of people they said they were hit in March. Now the Army plays the game, measuring which brigade has the highest goal. Winners provide more resources and create more innovative incentives.
The result is visible on the ground. Remember, if you can, news reports from Ukraine nine months ago were accompanied by panic: the city of Pokrovsk is about to fall, a disaster that many people think could lead to the collapse of the entire frontline. But Pokrovsk did not fall. Russians continued to attack the region: On May 15 alone, Ukrainian soldiers repelled 74 separate attacks and offensive operations based on the front lines of Pokrovsk. But in recent months, the frontline has hardly moved.
All of this helps explain the provocations of many Ukrainians now talking about war, even humor, and their assumption that they will continue to fight no matter what happens. During my time at LVIV, I also visited Superman, one of the city’s two veterans and war victims’ rehabilitation centers. Like the frontline, this is also a place for innovation and ambition. Maybe this sounds weird, but I also find it a place of optimism and hope: a brand new, well-designed facility where technicians make custom artificial limbs, surgeons restore hearing and vision, and exercise and psychology experts help seriously injured people reinvest.
Other societies in Ukrainian society have also been readjusted. Even the border troops have readjusted. Three years ago, in the spring of 2022, the train trip from Warsaw to Kiev was long and stressful. The train stopped and started, taking a circular route to avoid bombing tracks. Customs officials at the border briefly asked questions about passports and purposes. After returning, volunteers were waiting to help deal with Ukrainian refugees, and some boarding trains distributed sandwiches.
Last week, I crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border twice in the car. On our way into Ukraine, we waited for a few minutes so that the border troops could view our passports and check their computers. They told the joke, smiled, and waved. No one is short or nervous because no one is anxious or afraid. On the way back, there were no refugees or volunteers. No one gave us sandwiches.