Ukrainian journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk argues that Kyiv has no reason to trust talk of a quick “peace deal” brokered by Donald Trump, because the lived reality of the capital is a war that keeps killing civilians. She describes the immediate aftermath of the 24 April 2025 overnight barrage—the deadliest night in Kyiv this year—when Russian forces fired waves of ballistic and cruise missiles and swarms of drones. In a western suburb, a five-storey block and a nearby house were shattered; among the victims was 17-year-old Danya Khudya, whose friends waited at the rubble all day for a miracle that never came. As residents counted the dead and injured, Trump posted that the timing of the attack was “not necessary” and “very bad,” a reaction Gumenyuk contrasts with the city’s blunt arithmetic of loss. The episode, she writes, exposes how little basis there is for assuming Vladimir Putin seeks genuine peace: he is still escalating, and Ukraine’s defenses remain insufficient for a country of its size. Kyiv’s relative safety over the last year owed much to a handful of Patriot air-defense systems supplied by the United States, which have repeatedly intercepted hypersonic Kinzhals. But Ukraine fields fewer than ten such systems—far too few to cover multiple cities—and has asked to buy ten more. Washington’s control over the production, export permission, software updates, and radar configurations for Patriot batteries gives the U.S. enormous leverage. In Gumenyuk’s view, that leverage could be used not to secure a just peace but to strong-arm Kyiv into a ceasefire that freezes current front lines, forces Ukraine to cede occupied territory, and offers Moscow sanctions relief—while trusting the Kremlin not to restart the war. People in Kyiv, she concludes, do not live in that hypothetical future; they inhabit the present tense of sirens, shattered homes, and funerals. Against that evidence, the promise of a quick deal sounds less like realism than wishful thinking.