What price will Ukraine have to pay for peace?

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:09Today, after a flurry of summits, Trump still insists he will bring peace to Ukraine. But at what cost?

0:24My name is Sofia and I was born in the eastern Ukraine, in Donetsk. This city has been called the city of one million roses. If you go to any park, you will see a lot of roses. Donetsk in eastern Ukraine was once the richest city in the Donbass region. Famous not just for its flowers, but also its football club, Shakhtar Donetsk. Sofia's family are huge fans. It goes like really deep roots into my family. Shakhtar Football Club, they gave this opportunity to those people who were buying seasonal cards five years in a row, so we could have our surname on the chair. So even currently Donetsk is occupied, but we're still having our family chairs in the stadium.

1:15If you'd heard of Donetsk before the war, it was probably because you like football too. It was a host city for Euro 2012, which was held in Ukraine and Poland. So we had Euro 2012 when the stadium was opened. So we had Rihanna and Beyonce coming to sing. Hello, Ukraine. Are y 'all ready to dance? You can probably imagine the size and the level of the city that it was. And that was my bright memories.

1:46Mariupol, a steel city by the coast in the south of Donbass, was rougher around the edges than Donetsk. But it had its charms. It's on the sea, so like any free moment we had when the weather allowed, we were on the beach. So swimming, windsurfing, kitesurfing, you name it. Whatever a human being can do in water, we did it. This is Anton Yevshushkin. Like Sofia, he's not been able to return since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. Now, both of their hometowns are occupied by the Russians. Each a landscape of bombed-out apartments, blackened by smoke. Thousands of civilians have died. We still don't know how many.

2:35We have only fled right in the centre of the Donetsk. It's been damaged, so we had missiles flown next to our flat, so we had windows damaged. But it's been years since one of us, like from my family, has visited the flat because currently it's not possible to go. that front line. Today, Russia occupies roughly 88 % of the Donbass, including Donetsk and Mariupol. Now, Putin wants the rest. From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pidd. Today in Focus. After a dizzying few days of diplomacy, are we getting any closer to peace in Ukraine? And at what price?

3:16To recap, last Friday, Vladimir Putin accepted an invitation to meet Donald Trump in Alaska, just a few miles across the water from Russia. Trump went in talking tough, threatening Russia with sanctions if Putin didn't agree to a ceasefire. If I weren't president, in my opinion, he would much rather take over all of Ukraine, but I am president and he's not going to mess around with me. And he came out, well, almost sounding like he'd switched sides. After three hours of talks, three less than planned, and before they'd even had their dinner, it was over. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States of America and the President of the Russian Federation.

3:56Patrick Wintour, the Guardian's diplomatic editor, was watching when the two men emerged to meet the press. It was a pretty unusual press conference, wasn't it, Patrick?

4:04Patrick Wintour:It was unusual in, I suppose, three regards. One was that Putin was allowed to speak first. Our negotiations have been held in a constructive atmosphere of mutual respect. The second that Trump was so underpowered in his set of answers. Try and get this over with. We really made some great progress today. We didn't get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there. And perhaps the third was that he didn't give the press any permission to ask any questions. So it wasn't really a press conference in the normal sense of the word. but it was just a set of statements. Mr Putin, will you commit to not killing any more civilians?

4:44Patrick Wintour:And it could have been an opportunity for the Western press to really ask some difficult questions of Vladimir Putin, and that didn't happen. He was allowed to walk away. And Putin was allowed to have the last word at that press conference. Yes, and he came up with a little surprise offer in English. We'll speak to you very soon and probably see you again very soon. Thank you very much, Vladimir. Next time in Moscow. Oh, that's an interesting one. I'll get a little heat on that one, but I could see it possibly happening. Thank you very much. And I think that denoted that he felt this was the start of a long relationship.

5:21Patrick Wintour:It was also going to have a large economic component to it. It wasn't just going to be about Ukraine. This was about the return of Russia to normality and acceptance.

5:37So as you say, the press conference wasn't a traditional press conference in that journalists were not allowed to ask any questions. So it was quite unclear, actually, wasn't it, what they had discussed. But over the weekend, more details emerged of what Putin had asked for, namely control of the entire Donbass region, including parts and key cities in that region that Russia does not yet control. And Trump seemed to really have changed his tune from how he was talking going into the summit to how he came out of it. And this change in tone worried European leaders so much that they dropped everything to fly to Washington on Monday to support Vladimir Zelensky when he returned to the White House to meet Trump.

6:15What do you think freaked the Europeans out so much that they did that?

6:18Patrick Wintour:It was the clear expectation in the Alaska summit ahead of it, that there would be severe consequences, i.e. sanctions, extended sanctions by the Americans if no ceasefire was offered by Putin. And all those demands were dropped. It became clear that what they thought were the clear red lines that Trump had settled on had been scrubbed apart. And that left deeper concern because there had been an uncertainty about what Steve Whitcoff, the special envoy, had been saying to Putin at separate meetings exactly about this idea of territorial swaps. And then the picture emerged that really, in return for some kind of peace settlement, parts of the Donbass, which are not currently held by Russia and possibly contain as many as 300 ,000 Ukrainians, would be handed by Ukraine to Russia in effect perpetuity.

7:16Patrick Wintour:So more than 20 % of Ukraine would be partitioned off and held by Russia. So basically, it seems that the worry was that Trump seemed to have adopted most, if not all, of Putin's positions. And it was quite notable, I thought, on Monday, when Trump was back in the White House and awaiting this delegation from Europe, that he went on Truth Social and said, well, the ball's in Zelensky's court. He could end the war immediately, i.e. by accepting what Putin wants. And there were two meetings in the White House on Monday, and the first was a rerun of Trump versus Zelensky in the Oval Office. We all remember how it went last time.

7:57You're gambling with World War III. How did it go this time around, do you think?

8:02Patrick Wintour:You can never know with Donald Trump what mood he's going to be in. And almost as soon as he arrived, it was clear that he was in a benign mood and Zelensky had decided to wear a version of a suit rather than his t-shirt because that had been a sign of disrespect previously at one of the causes of the fracas in February. You look fabulous in that suit. You look good. I said the same thing. But it was also, I think, a sense that Trump felt flattered that so many European leads were coming to the White House. He was saying this was an extraordinary thing. It was unprecedented. I really want to thank you, President of the United States, dear Donald, for the fact that you, as I said before, broke the deadlock.

8:47Patrick Wintour:It's possible also that there had been some internal American pushback about what Trump had agreed to. And he felt upset at the idea that he completely caved in to Vladimir Putin in Alaska. So the first phase was, This opening, quite brief discussion between Zelensky and Trump, which was, I think, just more pleasantries and some light discussion about territorial swaps. Yeah, there was a big map, wasn't there? There was a large map of which Zelensky was later to contest about the percentage of territory held by the Russians. But the main thing was there was no blowout. They laughed, they joked, and the media were dealt with in a much more benign way.

9:33Patrick Wintour:President Zelensky. In the same suit.

9:39Patrick Wintour:That was a big achievement that the first meeting had gone well. And then the second meeting was much larger. And again, there was this sort of carpet bombing of flattery undertaken by the European leaders saying how much they welcomed Trump's intervention. The fact that you have said I'm willing to participate in the security guarantees is a big step. is really a breakthrough and it makes all the difference. So also thank you for that. Well, thank you very much, Donald, Mr. President, for hosting us today in this important meeting. He then in turn managed to flatter and think of something complimentary to say about each European leader before they spoke.

10:19Mr. Chancellor from Germany, a very great leader. Mr. President, dear Donald, many thanks for having us today.

10:33As we said, Trump seems to have given up on the idea of a ceasefire and is talking about some sort of long-term peace settlement, which is what Vladimir Putin wants. But this can obviously only be achieved if Ukraine is protected against future Russian attacks. What do we know so far about what those guarantees are and how they could work practically?

10:52Patrick Wintour:This issue has been in discussion for months and months. It was raised most in the context of this group called the Coalition of the Willing, which is basically European forces that are willing to provide some kind of help to Ukraine in the event of a peace settlement. But the exact nature of this force, whether they would be simply training Ukrainians, whether there would be soldiers from Europe willing to be involved in combat, their relationship with NATO, their relationship with America have all been up in the air. and the impression has been gained that there hasn't been a lot of European backing for this idea, particularly for one reason, which is that the Americans didn't seem to be willing to be involved in this in any way.

11:36Patrick Wintour:They wanted to wash their hands of Ukraine. They didn't regard it as their war and it was a European task to provide any of these guarantees and also that Trump doesn't have this level of distrust of Vladimir Putin that the Europeans hold. So what came out of the meeting was not a clear plan as to how America would be involved. What was becoming clear was that at some stage or other, Trump had suggested to the Europeans that he was willing to allow America to play a role, a coordinating role that's still unclear, providing security guarantees. And that's what the Europeans were certainly coming to the White House to discuss.

12:20And what about this idea that we've heard bandied about a lot this weekend of Article 5 style guarantees? We've heard that from the likes of Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State.

12:30Patrick Wintour:There was a phrase used quite often, which is a reference to NATO and the fact that if one member of NATO is attacked, it's a responsibility for all NATO countries to come to that country's defence. I'm not sure whether it really helps talking in those terms because it's still so unclear from the Americans what they're prepared to do. And it's clear also that the Russians, they put out a statement in the midst of the meetings in the Oval Office that they would not tolerate any NATO country forces inside Ukraine. Now, I think it goes to this bigger point, is Russia really willing to allow a sovereign Ukraine to exist or will be the intention is having grabbed a bit of the land to do everything possible to undermine the partitioned and Western protected Ukraine.

13:22And that I think is really at the kernel of these security

13:26Patrick Wintour:guarantees is that there is a lack of trust about Putin's intentions towards Ukraine and its sovereignty. And despite all of those kind of caveats and the uncertainty, would you say that it did feel like the potential kind of breakthrough of these two summits, this idea that there will be some sort of security protection if a deal can be struck with Putin? I think that's what all the Europeans came away from, the meeting, feeling they had made some progress on that and that they had got a commitment that there would be further work done on that. So with Trump, a lot happens and then, as someone said, a lot unhappens.

14:01Patrick Wintour:So you never know what is going to stick. But I think they feel they've got him into a corner enough on that issue that he will deliver because I guess he will feel in a broader context, look, I've brought peace to Ukraine and therefore I have a responsibility thereafter to enforce that peace. And the more they say to Donald Trump, this is your achievement, the more he'll feel willing to accept some responsibility, ensuring that achievement is preserved and honoured and the glorious Nobel World Peace Prize can be sent to America and to Donald Trump's office. And the question of territory didn't seem to come up in any of the public discussions that the leaders had in front of the cameras in Washington on Monday.

14:45But it assumed that it must have been under discussion. We've already talked about the pictures that came out of Zelensky and Trump looking at a big map of eastern Ukraine. And we know that Putin has demanded, as we've already discussed, the Donbass region. And why do you think Putin is so determined to have that region in particular in its entirety?

15:05Patrick Wintour:I think there's two reasons. One is that within the part of the Donbass that the Russians have not yet captured is some of the strongest Ukrainian defences, and that if those were handed to Russia, a military path would much more be open towards Kiev. And so that is a real worry. And the second is that he sees the Donbass as one of the Russian-speaking areas that should naturally be Russian, and it is most Russian. It would be a very, very bitter pill for Ukraine and for Zelensky to swallow him, and be also his political downfall if he agreed to this. And it's certainly going to be the most difficult point in the future negotiations.

15:55To be honest with you, we didn't really ever perceive Russia as a threat. Living and growing up in a city 25 miles away from Russia and speaking Russian, I have still probably more relatives behind the border in Russia, despite me being in Ukrainian. but my mum was born in Russia, so I have more cousins and uncles in Russia than I do in Ukraine. Anton grew up in Mariupol in Donbass, a part of Ukraine where Russian is widely spoken. Life was normal until 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and began occupying parts of Donbass, eight years before the full-scale invasion. Anton now lives in the UK, and so does Sofia.

16:44Neither have been able to go home for years. When the first invasion started, I was like 15 years old. After that, I wasn't able to visit my childhood photos. Unfortunately, I left them. So I took just only one little album. But like all my childhood photos with my grandfather, the childhood time that I was spending in the Black Sea, it's all there, unfortunately. And Donetsk is often in the news because of the occupation and the fighting that has been there. What's it like for you seeing your hometown on the TV in the middle of a war zone? It hurts me when I see like even destroyed parts of town where, for example, when I was six or seven, we were going with my grandmother to buy some newspaper or for some food shopping.

17:32And like, I know that we've been in the queue here. We've been visiting that shop. Now it's all destroyed. So, yeah, this is difficult to see.

17:45Mariupol was one of the cities bombed most heavily during the first stage of the 2022 invasion Anton watched on helplessly from afar knowing his family were still there I failed to persuade my family to leave Mariupol and no one in Mariupol believed that the city was just going to be completely destroyed simply because everyone was like, oh, we speak Russian. We have relatives across the board and nothing's going to happen to us. Come on. Really? Are they, what are they going to do? Are they going to bomb us? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. And they did. Yeah. And they did. Like a week hasn't passed since they, and they attacked and it was horrible.

18:24They first destroyed all the infrastructure. So all the water supply, all the power lines leading to the city. So city had no water. Sewers were not working. There was no power. within like five days they plunged the city in the Stone Age, they didn't have to destroy the city. They could just lay siege to it. They just could stop 10 kilometres away from a city line and that's it. They had it surrounded. They didn't have to destroy it. Anton's family managed to get out, but he still has friends there. I just spoke to a guy who's there now. It's horrible. They all suffer from scarcity of drinkable water.

19:03So they have like portable water in their taps for like a couple of hours a week. A week. Really? Gosh. It's like there's no jobs, no industry. They've demolished the like whole city blocks basically. They don't really care about restoring what they've damaged. It's just absolutely appalling and atrocious what's going on there. how they treat people, how the whole city looks like, how it smells like. It's horrible, he says. Absolutely horrible.

19:46Coming up, will Zelensky meet Putin face-to-face? And what will he be willing to give away?

20:03So Patrick, at the meeting with the European leaders on Monday, Trump apparently disappeared for 40 minutes, rang up Putin and said, hey, how about a meeting with Zelensky, just the two of you, then maybe, I don't know, I can join later down the line. How likely do you think it is that Zelensky and Putin will meet?

20:20Patrick Wintour:Well, there's already been some slippage on that because the concept that was discussed in the open part of the meetings was a trilateral event. After the phone call with Putin, it was being referenced more as a bilateral meeting. And the Russians have not said that Putin is himself willing to go to meet Zelensky. And you could end up with a second version of this event that occurred in Istanbul in May, where there was supposed to be high level meetings between the Ukrainians and the Russians, and no one of such a high level from Russia attended. So it all fell apart very quickly. But I think Putin will be under a lot of pressure now from Trump to attend.