‘Doesn’t feel like peace to me’: Ukrainians in the UK fear war will never end after Trump-Zelensky meeting
Ukrainians living in Britain fear Vladimir Putin’s war on their country “will never end” after watching the summit between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky unfold at the White House earlier this week.
Monika Popadiuk, who moved to the UK from Kyiv in July 2022, said she was “afraid of losing everything a second time” if the devastating conflict is not brought to an end. The 28-year-old left her dream job as a lawyer in Ukraine’s parliament and moved to rural Somerset under the British government’s Homes for Ukraine scheme.
Like many displaced Ukrainians, Ms Popadiuk desperately wants to go back to her old life in Kyiv. But she does not feel that will be possible in the near future, despite the meeting on Monday being hailed as “real progress” by prime minister Sir Keir Starmer.
“The ‘peace’ people talk about does not feel like peace to me,” she told The Independent. “It feels like just a pause. Unless Ukraine is given real security guarantees, the war will resume.”
She is concerned that any peace talks between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders would only “freeze” the war.
“It does not seem that the Kremlin truly wants to end this war,” she continued. “Even if the war is frozen now, it will start again in a few months or years, when Russia is stronger than today.”
When it comes to Ukraine conceding territory, Ms Popadiuk thinks this will only serve to embolden Russia: “This looks very much like appeasement. History shows us that appeasement never stops aggressors. It only encourages them to continue.”
Three years on from the start of the Russian invasion, there are some young Ukrainians who have never even seen their own country.
Liza Perebyynis’s son was born in 2022, after Russia launched its full-scale assault on Ukraine, and he is now considered a “child of war”.
“He doesn’t know the war, but he would have this status,” the 34-year-old said.
The boy is now three years old, and while he understands Ukrainian, he does not speak it. It pains his mother that she cannot show him her country while the war continues to rage.
Ms Perebyynis is from the Donbas region and left Ukraine in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. She went to China at first, and later to Germany, where she has opened her own yoga studio. Monday’s meeting, which also saw key European leaders hosted in Washington DC, was not a “breakthrough” in her view – it was merely history repeating itself.
She told The Independent: “We’ve been there already. This conflict has not been happening since 2014 or 2022. It’s been here for centuries. The territory has been back and forth.
“We’ve been betrayed. Giving up territories now would mean the war will start again in three years or in five years.”
