‘What about our lives?’: emotions run high in frontline Ukrainian city over ceding land to Russia | Ukraine

TThe city of Zaporizhzhia, an industrial center in Southeast Ukraine, is a good place to implement a “land excretion for peace” agreement envisaged by Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump to occupy Ukraine along the current facade lines of Russia.

Since Russian troops began to enter Ukraine in February 2022, Zaporizhzhia is a 30 -minute drive from the front with its wide streets and Stalin apartment blocks. Under a close attack on missiles and drones. On Sunday, a Russian -guided air bomb hit a bus stop that wounded 24 people – it only suffered another pain in a city that recognizes many.

Here and in other Ukrainian towns close to the front, if the recent years are tired of sleepless nights, and if Kiev means that the attacks will stop, they are ready to sign a peace agreement, even a flawed agreement.

But many of them have a very different view, because they first know what Russia means to give control over the territory of Ukraine: arrests, disappearances and erasing of anything Ukrainian. In order to rapidly move to Russia to Russia, to rapidly move to Russia, to expel or arrest the active members of the society and to introduce heavy new media organizations and school curriculum on propaganda, it can make it almost impossible for Ukraine to regain these regions at a later date.

One out of every five people living in Zaporizhzhia is internal displaced from the front or the occupied parts of Ukraine. They live in Zaporizhzhia until they can go home.

During a recent visit to Zaporizhzhia, a group of voluntary women in a warehouse building where camouflage networks for the Ukrainian army said, “No!” In response to the question of whether people will be happy to freeze the lines in exchange for peace.

“What about our homes, our lives, everything we expect to return?” one of the women asked, quickly became a tear. “Our only hope is that Ukraine takes them back or we can never go home again.”

Apparently, on Friday, an offer that went further on the agenda at a summit between Putin and Trump in Alaska: Putin, Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions should give up the parts of the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, probably in exchange for the small parts of Russia and Sumy regions and for the promise of a lot of land, the promise of the ukra for the promise of the promise.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy excluded the idea that the Ukrainian army would only leave some regions and leave the population to the Russian administration. However, Trump argued that it was a good idea that has mentioned land swaps such as an easy and fair solution.

Trump said on Monday, “Through Russia and speaking with everyone and speaking with everyone. For the good of Ukraine. Good things are not bad things. Also, bad things for both,” he said.

As a simple process, the idea of this land swap believes in the terrible reality that can accompany such a movement. In most of the debates on a peace agreement in the Ukrainian conflict, it seemed secondary to the problems of people’s fate, land, military and security problems. The ordinary speech of the land swaps took this even further.

His plan on how Russia works in occupied regions has been fixed: uses an incentive and coercion mixture to gain cooperation from local honor. A minority welcomes the Russian administration and is happy to cooperate, others under pressure, rejects were thrown or arrested.

In the construction of a former technical institute in Zaporizhzhia, the mayors and local councils of the towns in the region are still in exile, one to every room. Most of the mayors had stories of putting pressure by the Russians in the early days of the occupation, some were arrested and threatened.

In the Enerhodar room, the town on which the Zaporizhzhzhia nuclear power plant is based, Mayor Dmytro Orlov said that more than half of the town’s population has been separated since 2022. First he was asked for a nice way to work with Russian invaders. After the deputy was arrested, he hid and then fled to Zaporizhzhia. “It was clear that I had to leave,” he said.

At that time it was possible to cross the facade line, but now it has been sealed. On the day Guardian visited, a man had just arrived in the office to ask for help that has made a 10 -day driving over Russia, Turkey and Europe to cover the short distance between Enerhodar and Zaporizhzhia. His brother was imprisoned for helping the Ukrainian army; He was just released from captivity. He came to Zaporizhzhia with a few suitcases and something else, and appealed to local authorities to help him start a new life.

Every day there are new, similar stories of the profession to ruin their lives and divide families. Most of those who resisted in the early days are still disappearing in Russia’s network of torture facilities and prisons for Ukrainian prisoners. More recently, those who have been accepted as “difficult” elements such as teachers who refused to teach the Russian curriculum have been fired from their homes and have been banned from their “Russian territory” for decades.

New arrivals from Russia were replaced by those who were separated or forced from occupied regions. “The Russians brought a lot of people, Iv said Ivan Fedorov, Regional Governor. Some are retired from the icy parts of Russia, which are taken with the promise of a better climate; Others are police, prosecutors, teachers and other officials brought to support the occupation regime.

The idea is that after a decade of the influx of population and after the Russian school curriculum, a small number of themselves in these regions will deal with Ukraine in any way. “The main objectives of our towns are changing the gene pool of our towns, Fed said Fedorov.

For many occupied Ukrainians, to control Russia in a peace agreement means goodbye to their homes forever.