Ukrainians’ hopes and concerns as the Trump presidency approaches

Anastasiia Fedchenko, 36, cries in anguish – her agony echoes off the golden walls of kyiv’s St. Michael’s Cathedral.

She is sitting with her hands on both sides of her stomach. She is pregnant with her first child, a little girl. Her husband Andriy Kusmenko is inches away, in uniform, in an open coffin.

The navy commander was killed in action in eastern Ukraine on January 4 this year. He is now and forever 33 years old. While Andriy fought in the war, Anastasiia reported on it as a journalist.

His brothers in arms parade, placing red roses in his coffin. As the funeral prayers draw to a close, Anastasiia leans forward and gives a final kiss to the “love of her life.”

Outside the cathedral, she pays tribute to her “most beautiful husband”, who died for his country.

“I’m sorry that my daughter will never see her father,” she told the BBC, “but she will know that he was a soldier, an officer and that he did everything he could to make her ‘Ukraine exists for her and for other generations.

“This war will last as long as Russia. I really fear that our children will inherit it and be forced to go and fight.”

Not according to Donald Trump, who has said he could end the war in a day and is returning to the White House next week. He is already campaigning for peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.

This would dishonor the fallen, according to Sgt Dmytro, call sign “Smile”, who fought alongside Andriy and came to the cathedral to mourn him.

“Let the people in power decide, but I don’t think those who have fallen would want them (Ukrainian leaders) to sit around the table,” he said.

“After the funeral, we return to work. We will fight for every fallen Ukrainian.”

Many here believe – like Anastasiia and Dmytro – that far too many Ukrainians were killed trying to make a deal with Russia. But public opinion is changing, and others believe there is too much death and destruction not to reach an agreement.

As Ukraine endures its third winter of war, one word is now rarely spoken here: “victory.”

As the full-scale invasion of Russia began in February 2022, we heard it everywhere. It was a rallying cry for a nation suddenly faced with columns of enemy tanks. But the past is truly a foreign country – and one with more territory.

Moscow now controls almost a fifth of its neighbor’s territory (including the Crimean peninsula, conquered in 2014) and says any peace talks must take this into account.

The Ukraine of 2025 is a place of cold, harsh realities – where cities are emptying, cemeteries are filling, and many soldiers are deserting their posts.

A six-hour drive from the capital, in the heart of Ukraine, a young soldier is in the dock.

Serhiy Hnezdilov, a burly 24-year-old man, is locked in a glass cell in a crowded courtroom in the city of Dnipro. He is on trial for desertion and is just one of many.

Since 2022, around 100,000 cases have been opened against soldiers who left their units, according to data from the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office.

When Hnezdilov went absent without permission, he publicly demanded a clear timetable for the end of military service. He says he is ready to fight but not without a demobilization plan. He has already served five years, two of them before the full-scale invasion of Russia.

“We have to keep fighting,” he told me during a break in the hearing, “we have no other choice.”

“But soldiers are not slaves. Anyone who has spent three or more years on the front line deserves the right to rest. The authorities have promised to fix the conditions of service for a very long time, but they have not done so. “

In court, he also complained of corrupt commanders and deadly incompetence.

After the brief procedural hearing, he was handcuffed for return to prison. If convicted, he faces up to 12 years in prison. “Help Ukraine,” he told us as we led him away.

Many other Ukrainian soldiers are still straining all their nerves on the front line, trying to at least slow down the Russian advance.

Mykhailo, 42, commander of a drone unit, chain smoker, fights every night fueled by “Non-Stop”, a Ukrainian energy drink.

He is part of the 68th “Jaeger” brigade, which is fighting to retain the eastern frontline town of Pokrovsk, a transport hub. The Russians are closing in on two sides.

Mykhailo drives us to a Ukrainian position – a journey we can only risk at nightfall and in an armored vehicle. The Russians also have their eyes glued to the sky. Their drones pose a constant threat. He is alert and tired.

“I went to the enlistment office in the first days,” he tells us, “and I hoped that everything would go quickly. Honestly, I’m tired. Leaves are rare (in his case, a total of 40 days in three years). The only thing that saves me is that I can video chat with my family.”

We arrive at an abandoned house where Mykhailo and his men unload their equipment and install a pop-up drone. The screens are transported and the cables connected.

Outside, troops erected an antenna taller than a two-story building. They work quickly by torchlight – using red beams, not white because they are harder to detect. Then they assemble bombs to arm their “vampire” – an oversized attack drone.

Over the next few hours, we’ll have a front-row seat as Mykhailo – call sign “Admin” – pilots the drone, his eyes darting from one screen to the next. First, it drops supplies to front-line Ukrainian troops, then drops an anti-tank mine on underground Russian forces. He falls slightly short of his target.

He faced strong winds and Russian jamming. Meanwhile, he is on the lookout for incoming enemy drones.

Mykhailo detects a Russian warplane in the sky. A few minutes later we hear the distinct thud of three Russian hover bombs. “It’s far,” he told us. It turns out to be two or three kilometers away.

During a lull, I ask Mykhailo if he thinks a peace deal is possible. “Maybe not,” he said. “He’s (Putin) a completely unstable person, and that’s a very gentle thing to say.”

“I hope that at some point the enemy will stop because he is tired, or that someone sane will come to power.”

He will not comment on President Trump.

While Mykhailo is a veteran of this war, one of his men is a newbie. David, 24, enlisted last September as the Russians approached his hometown. He now spends his time handling explosives – although he would rather be at university learning languages.

“No one knows how long the war will last,” he says, “maybe not even the politicians.”

“I would like this to end soon so that civilians don’t suffer and people don’t die anymore. But given the current situation on the front lines, it won’t be soon.”

He believes that if the guns fall silent, it will only be a pause, before Moscow comes back for more.

The winds become stronger and the vampire drone crashes. It is out of service at the moment. The unit packs up and leaves, as quickly as it arrived. They will resume action at nightfall, resuming duels in the sky.

But on the ground, the Russians continue to make progress, and the Trump presidency will push for an agreement. And there is another hard truth here: If this happens, it is unlikely to be on Ukraine’s terms.

Additional reporting by Wietske Burema, Goktay Koraltan, Anastasiia Levchenko and Volodymyr Lozhko.