Ukrainian journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk argues that Kyiv has no reason to trust talk of a quick \u201cpeace deal\u201d 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\u2014the deadliest night in Kyiv this year\u2014when 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 \u201cnot necessary\u201d and \u201cvery bad,\u201d a reaction Gumenyuk contrasts with the city\u2019s 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\u2019s defenses remain insufficient for a country of its size. Kyiv\u2019s 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\u2014far too few to cover multiple cities\u2014and has asked to buy ten more. Washington\u2019s control over the production, export permission, software updates, and radar configurations for Patriot batteries gives the U.S. enormous leverage. In Gumenyuk\u2019s 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\u2014while 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.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kyiv\u2019s view of Trump\u2019s promised \u201cpeace deal\u201d is shaped by rubble and funerals, not slogans. After the year\u2019s deadliest strike on the capital, Nataliya Gumenyuk argues that Putin isn\u2019t seeking peace and U.S. leverage over air defenses risks forcing a bad ceasefire.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[698,701,675,674,678,676],"class_list":["post-1779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-drones","tag-kyiv","tag-putin","tag-trump","tag-ukraine","tag-usa","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n