The mother and IT analyst in Charkiv wants to be anonymous but calls herself Olena. Over the phone, she talks about the sound of the drones buzzing and the children's schooling, which is marked by constant trips to the shelters.
We must have peace, we are losing a whole generation. Russia is the aggressor, everyone is aware of that, but if the only way to end the war is to give up parts of the occupied areas, maybe we have to accept it, she says and adds that her family and many friends reason in the same way.
Is it propaganda?
Olena is aware that what she says is controversial and goes against what President Volodymyr Zelenskyj and many European leaders have emphasized before Friday's summit in Alaska - that no decisions about Ukraine's future can be made without Kyiv.
It would be a violation of international law, but such crimes have already been committed, she says.
At the same time, she dismisses Putin's repeated claims that Russians and Ukrainians are one people as "pure propaganda".
We do not want to be part of Russia, we are Ukrainians and have a different culture. And I do not understand why Russia, which is such a huge country, thinks it needs more land.
If the "territorial exchanges" that Donald Trump has hinted at before the summit become a reality, Ukrainians must be given support so they can move away from those areas, says Olena. And security guarantees from the outside world are to be desired.
On Putin's terms?
Unlike Olena, who feels some hope before the Alaska meeting, economist Pavlo Shkourenko in the capital Kyiv and doctor Olena Goloborodko from Charkiv are critical.
Worthless. The worst scenario would be if Trump is drawn in and starts playing on Russia's half, says Shkourenko, who is a sanctions analyst at the Kyiv School of Economics and has gotten used to a life with air raid warnings.
He believes that Putin, through the meeting, primarily wants to try to strengthen his grip on cities like Luhansk (in the region with the same name, which Russia illegally annexed in 2022) and Kramatorsk in Donetsk.
On the one hand, it is good that the meeting is taking place, it means that Russia is under pressure. But no peace agreement can be concluded without Ukraine, says Shkourenko.
Olena Goloborodko, who fled to Sweden at the outbreak of war but has just been back in Ukraine, emphasizes that her compatriots are afraid that land areas will be used as a springboard for future Russian offensives if they are given up.
Russia will not stop the aggression, she predicts.
All Ukrainians want peace, but it will not come through two leaders talking about Ukraine without Ukraine, it must be a three-party conversation.
At home in Charkiv, where she worked at a hospital, windows are blown out and buildings are destroyed. The friends who are left are only focusing on surviving, she says.
On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, after already entering the neighboring country in 2014, which then led to the annexation of the Crimean peninsula and a largely frozen conflict in Donbass in the east.
In a supposed lightning-fast offensive from the north, east, and south, the Russian forces encountered resistance. They did not reach Kyiv, but advanced along the southern coast to the Crimean peninsula. The coastal city of Mariupol fell after a long and bloody siege.
Ukraine carried out two counter-offensives in the fall of 2022, where they recaptured the Charkiv region in the northeast and the major city of Cherson and its surroundings in the south. In connection with this, Russia said it would annex the only partially occupied regions of Cherson, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Zaporizjzja.
A larger Ukrainian counter-offensive began in the summer of 2023, but failed to break through a then fortified Russian defense.
In August 2024, Ukrainian forces entered Russia and occupied part of the Kursk region.
Russia has regularly attacked places all over Ukraine with missiles and drones. At least tens of thousands of civilians have been killed in the war, but the number of unreported cases is believed to be large. Several million Ukrainians have fled abroad.
