By Anna Magdalena Lubowicka and Małgorzata Wojtunik
SOPOT, Poland (Reuters) – Three years since the arrival of Russian forces drove her from her home in eastern Ukraine to Poland, Oksana Sapronova and other refugees fear their homeland’s battlefield losses could now end up being in vain.
“I simply don’t want to think that our boys were killed in this war for nothing,” the 41-year-old said as she sat with other Ukrainians in a beachside cafe in the Baltic town of Sopot in northern Poland.
Her brother has been fighting on the front line since Moscow sent troops and tanks into Ukraine in February 2022 for what it called a “special military operation”.
Sapronova, like many Ukrainians, is worried that talks this week between U.S. and Russian officials – with no seat for Ukraine at the table – could force Ukraine to make painful territorial concessions and leave it vulnerable to further Russian advances.
U.S. President Donald Trump has dramatically changed Washington’s approach towards the conflict, engaging directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, pushing for a quick deal to end the war and calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy a “dictator”.
The sudden rift between the once firm allies has shaken Ukrainians’ hopes for a peace deal that would preserve the country’s territorial integrity and give strong security guarantees. Zelenskiy and other Ukrainian officials have repeatedly said Kyiv would not accept any deals made behind its back.
“We should believe Russia and the United States again that we will be safe? They cheated us once before,” said Olha Shkapa, 45, from Kyiv, referring to the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.
Kyiv gave up nuclear weapons it inherited from the Soviet Union under a 1994 agreement, the Budapest Memorandum, in return for security assurances from Russia, the U.S. and Britain.
FATE OF EASTERN REGIONS
The fate of Russian-occupied regions in the eastern part of the country could be a crucial part of any future peace deal.
Putin in June last year set out his stance on territory, saying Ukraine must withdraw its troops from the four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia.
Shkapa said losing the eastern regions would mean “there was no point in the deaths of so many civilians and soldiers”.
Sapronova said she hoped the occupied areas will return to Ukraine, but she has no plans to return to her hometown of Zaporizhzhia from Poland where she feels settled and has restarted her sewing business.
“The country is ruined … there is simply nothing to come back to for me,” Sapronova said, adding that she hopes for a better future for her daughter.
“I would like her to live in a country which will not be rebuilding for the next 10 years because of the war,” she said.
(Reporting by Anna Lubowicka and Malgorzata Wojtunik; Editing by Alan Charlish and Helen Popper)
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