A Ukrainian Socialist Went to War . Here What He Thinks About Peace . - International Viewpoint

internationalviewpoint.org · Feb 26, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

Full Article

Four years into Russia’s invasion, Taras Bilous — a socialist serving in the Ukrainian army — reflects on exhaustion, negotiations, and why a bad ceasefire could be a boon for the far right.The situation on the ground Sasha Talaver: You’ve been in the army for almost four years. What is your job now? How are you feeling?Taras Bilous: I’m a drone operator who performs aerial reconnaissance. I’m currently on leave to recover from injury, so I have more free time now than I have these past three years. I am feeling well, thank you. I still have a piece of shrapnel in my liver, but overall, I have fully recovered. I am currently in Kyiv with my parents, and my leave is coming to an end. Sasha Talaver: What’s the situation in Kyiv, after the Russian shelling of energy facilities?Taras Bilous: It has finally started to warm up, so things are getting better. The worst is over; at least there won’t be such severe frosts. In general, it all depended on the area — in some places, the heating hasn’t been working since January. It was hardest for the poor, people with disabilities, and so on. This was definitely the hardest winter for civilians thus far: luckily, the previous winters were mild. Still, for many people not belonging to vulnerable groups, it was easier than in autumn 2022, when Russia first started bombing Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Back then, the lights went out, the water supply completely stopped working, and there was no internet or mobile communication, sometimes all day. Now, even when we don’t have electricity, the water supply often works, and communication is stable. The Western left and Trump’s “peace” push Sasha Talaver: You wrote a well-known letter to the Western left in February 2022 in which you criticised it for insisting that its main enemy is in its own countries, and for its lack of solidarity with the armed resistance to the Russian invasion. [1] How do you assess the situation now, after Donald Trump’s push for negotiations?Taras Bilous: Circumstances have changed, and my position has changed somewhat accordingly. But what I wrote then was generally correct. I think that Trump’s failure in the peace negotiations confirms what I wrote then: "A call for diplomacy in itself means nothing if we don’t address negotiating positions, concrete concessions, and the willingness of the parties to adhere to any signed agreement." For example, regarding the ceasefire, Ukraine has favoured a complete and unconditional ceasefire since April 2025, but Russia still does not accept it. But who on the Left is saying that Russia must be forced to comply with the ceasefire? The progress of peace negotiations Sasha Talaver: How would you assess the progress of peace negotiations?Taras Bilous: Only recently could we say that real negotiations are taking place. What happened over the past year was a show for Trump. He got involved without understanding the situation, with foolish illusions, and only made things worse. When Trump won, I thought that things would most likely get worse for us, but to be honest, deep down I had a faint hope that a miracle might happen after all. Although Trump is the last person from whom I’d want to seek help, I, like other Ukrainians, above all want this damn war to be over. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that no good could be expected. Importantly, Trump returned as president when both Ukraine and Russia were already exhausted by war, though certainly not as much as now. After the failure of the 2023 counteroffensive, the argument that "we cannot leave our people under occupation" became irrelevant. Throughout 2024, sentiment in favour of freezing the conflict gradually grew in Ukraine, including within the army. [2] Regardless of who won the US presidential election, negotiations would have started anyway. And it seems that the Ukrainian government understood this — the 2024 peace summit in Switzerland and the Kursk operation were, among other things, attempts to strengthen their position ahead of negotiations. I think many Western analysts don’t understand that the main reason for Volodymyr Zelensky changing his position on the ceasefire was not pressure from Trump but a change in Ukrainians’ mood and recognition of battlefield realities. Zelensky shifted already back in November 2024, agreeing to the possibility of freezing the conflict without Russia returning all occupied territories. Everything pushed in this sense. Even since spring 2024, if I heard any mention in the army of Ukraine’s "1991 borders," it was always sarcastic. Changing attitudes in the army Sasha Talaver: Did opinions change in the army too?Taras Bilous: Yeah, for sure. Maybe even earlier than in society as a whole. I first heard people talking about how it would be good to freeze the conflict back in autumn 2022, from guys who were fighting around Bakhmut and then got transferred to a rear unit. But back then this was a rare view, given the prevalent optimism after the successful Kharkiv operation. This gradually changed during 2024. Sasha Talaver: How did people in your unit react to Trump’s initiatives?Taras Bilous: At first, a mix: fears that Trump would cut off military aid and hopes that the war would finally end. But gradually, people stopped talking about it. When the twenty-eight points appeared last autumn, [3] some international journalists asked me what ordinary soldiers were saying, but I had no answer because it seemed that no one was paying attention anymore. In general, soldiers don’t often discuss such topics — usually, everyone is absorbed in their daily routine. For my team, the most pressing problem back then was mice in the blindage, not Trump. Trump and the failure of negotiations Sasha Talaver: But now, Ukraine was ready to freeze the conflict.Taras Bilous: Yes, but to end the war, Trump had to increase pressure on Russia, and instead, we got a farce, with a red carpet for Vladimir Putin in Alaska. [4] Obviously, Trump doesn’t care about Ukraine and thought he could quickly achieve peace by forcing Ukraine to agree to Russia’s terms. Well, he didn’t understand either country, and if he really wanted to end the war quickly, his actions were counterproductive. Trump could write a book on "the art of how not to make a deal." Trump surrendered one negotiating position after another, abandoned his demand for an unconditional ceasefire, and gave Putin what he wanted: recognition and a way out of international isolation. In essence, Putin played him for a fool for a whole year, and apparently only after his history lessons in Alaska did Trump begin to understand what he was dealing with. But now the Russians are rejecting all proposals, citing the “spirit of Anchorage.” Trump gave them that. What real grounds are there to believe that Putin has abandoned his original plan to destroy the Ukrainian state? The Kremlin is still talking about the “root causes of the conflict.” The demand to surrender the unoccupied part of Donbas to Russia without a fight may be just a step towards this. Sasha Talaver: But you said that real negotiations are finally underway. Why?Taras Bilous: First, we have direct negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, rather than a show where the “great powers” agree on something without Ukraine’s involvement. Second, the delegations’ membership has changed, and with it the nature of the negotiations. Regardless of the political conditions, important technical issues need to be resolved, in particular how to monitor the ceasefire. It would be better if, by the time political agreements finally become possible, decisions on such technical issues are already made. But on political issues, Russia is still putting forward conditions that are unacceptable to Ukraine, so this is at a standstill. Thirdly, in October, Trump finally began to put pressure on Russia and imposed new sanctions against Russian oil companies. This is surely not enough, but it is something. Moreover, last year, Russia’s economy finally faced serious problems and headed into stagnation. This is far from a collapse, but its problems are growing. Most of its reserve funds have already been spent in previous years on overcoming the consequences of sanctions and developing the military-industrial complex. Security guarantees Sasha Talaver: What do you think about one of the most pressing issues in the negotiations: security guarantees?Taras Bilous: Let’s look at things soberly. In the context of the collapse of the international order, no written security guarantees are reliable. For Ukraine, there are two main security guarantees: the army and the fact that Russia has suffered heavy losses in this war. Now they will think twice before attacking us again. As for the negotiations, let’s compare them with the Istanbul talks in spring 2022, where the Russians demanded that the Ukrainian army be limited to 85,000 troops. [5] Now they also want to limit our army, but no one is talking about such ridiculous numbers anymore. Back then, they wanted Russia to have the right to veto military aid to Ukraine in the event of aggression. This would have made the agreement no more valuable than the Budapest Memorandum from 1994. [6] Ukraine could never have agreed. We don’t know for certain all the conditions Russia is currently pushing, but it seems that they are no longer demanding such a veto. Sasha Talaver: Some authors still say that Ukraine and Russia were close to signing a peace agreement in Istanbul, but Boris Johnson ruined such hopes.Taras Bilous: I don’t understand how this can still be repeated after the publication of the draft security guarantee agreement and the article by Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko about these negotiations. [7] They show that even in this agreement, the parties’ positions on some key issues differed greatly. In addition, territorial issues were not even discussed then — they were put off until a personal meeting between Zelensky and Putin. Now the territories are being disc