If Zelensky’s government gave up sovereignty to secure peace, the sense of betrayal in Ukraine would be profound
Will Lloyd
March 16, 2025
The Sunday Times
Pasha was neck-deep in a trench, hacking away at a stubborn tree root with a hand shovel. He did not expect an end to this war any time soon. “We have been fighting Russia for hundreds of years,” he said, and laughed. Mud and dirt fell from his beard and hands. He thought the Russians were insane. The present conflict, for him, began not in 2022 with the full-scale invasion but in 2014 when Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms seized Crimea and much of eastern Ukraine. “I’m 24 years old but I feel much, much older,” he said. “I’ve been preparing for this war since I was 12.” He expects to be at the front by the end of this year.
Along with another dozen men and one young woman, Pasha was paying about £250 to attend a four-day boot camp outside Kyiv with Ukraine’s 3rd Separate Assault Brigade. The battle-hardened brigade is one of the most popular volunteer military units in Ukraine.
The volunteers all had day jobs. There was no obligation for them to be cold and sleep-deprived in the frozen forest, stripping AK47s and learning how to evacuate an injured comrade from a compromised trench. Yet here they all were. They wanted to be ready for the front line. Every single one of them expected the war with Russia to continue.
While the world was transfixed last week by high-level diplomatic manoeuvres in Moscow, Jeddah and Washington to engineer a 30-day pause in the fighting, the 3rd’s instructors were prepping these volunteers for combat. “How many of you have held one of these?” barked one teacher, codenamed Student, as the group cleaned Kalashnikovs. Every hand went up. “Remember, that’s not the weapon. You are the weapon.”
Russia has so far stuck to a set of familiar demands that few Ukrainians would agree to, whether they were directly involved with the process or selling pickles by the side of the road: the demilitarisation of Ukraine, an end to western military aid and a guarantee that the country will never join Nato. Such concessions would open the door to the indirect rule of Ukraine from Moscow. It is not something Ukrainians will accept, said Janina Dill, a professor at the University of Oxford who has carried out several large-scale surveys of Ukrainian public opinion since the invasion of February 2022. “Ukrainians are willing to resist a Belarus model of Russian control over the government in Kyiv at any cost,” she said. “We have found that Ukrainians are not willing to accept a strategy that raises the likelihood of Russian political control, even if it saves lives or reduces the risk of nuclear war.”
While public opinion has softened slightly on some territorial concessions and forsaking Nato membership, Ukrainians remain “remarkably willing to bear the costs of resisting Russia’s aggression”, she said. At the boot camp the raw, enthusiastic volunteers attempted an assault on
a fake Russian position. Flashbangs and smoke grenades exploded. The forest briefly resembled a war zone. “Student” stood at the back, observing closely through wraparound shades, chewing on roasted sunflower seeds.
In December he was declared clinically dead twice after being wounded in combat. He underwent surgery to have two titanium plates inserted in his neck. At one point he remembered seeing his body float above him while he was laid out on a gurney. But somehow he was still alive. He didn’t want to get drawn into a conversation about diplomacy. “I can only tell you one thing. This war will not stop soon.” He thought the volunteers were doing well enough, but they were not ready for the front line.
Alex, a lanky 26-year-old coalminer from Ternivka, lived less than 50km from the Russian positions in eastern Ukraine. “This is our reality. If you are living in Ukraine you have to be ready to fight, just like in Israel with the IDF. I am ready to fight.”
Can a durable peace in Ukraine be imposed from above by the United States and Russia? Not according to these volunteers. They understood the terror of Russian occupation in the east: the systematic practice there of abduction, arbitrary detention and torture, including beating and electrocution (the Ukrainian prosecutor-general’s office has registered more than 150,000 violations of the Geneva Conventions by Russian forces since 2022). They knew Russia’s unreliable history as a peace negotiator. “Maybe there will be a ceasefire for a few months,” said another volunteer, who did not wish to be named due to his business interests. He was blind in one eye. The blindness was the only thing that prevented him from being at the front line. “Who trusts Putin? That question answers itself.”
The only certainty is that there is more uncertainty ahead. “Nobody knows what is going to happen,” said Taras Chmut, the head of Ukraine’s largest charity, Come Back Alive. From a central Kyiv office around the corner from a bombed out maternity clinic, the group supplies vital weapons, supplies and training for the Ukrainian armed forces. “We won’t lose this war because of the genius of the enemy,” said Chmut, 33. “We will only lose if we are weak. We are prepared for the worst, whether that is the death of a president, the use of nuclear weapons or a complete halt in arms supplies from our partners.”
Back in Kyiv on Friday evening, the traffic on Khreshchatyk street, the city’s busiest thoroughfare, was brought to a standstill by five hundred flag-waving teenagers. The boys, youth members of right-wing groups like Right Sector and Tryzub (“Trident”) were celebrating the volunteer units that have formed the military backbone of their country for over a decade. Before the war, pale teenagers with acne dressed in shades and ski masks, bellowing right-wing slogans, were considered hooligans or troublesome radicals. Today they are patriotic heroes. “They are our future,” said Nadia, a 39-year-old nurse, watching the boys’ quick march towards Maidan Square. Her husband Stanislav was taken prisoner by the Russians in Bakhmut in 2023. She was waiting for him to come home, not for the war to end. “We don’t want peace,” she said. “We want to be free.”
These skinny boys were another generation of Ukrainians implacably opposed to Russia. Roman, an 18-year-old student with a thin beard, from Ivano-Frankivsk in the west of the country, was a
member of Tryzub. The green fatigues he wore could not hide his youth. He was certain that a ceasefire was “impossible”. Russia demanded too much. “The day will come when I have to take a rifle and defend my homeland.” It may have sounded like macho talk but Roman’s sentiment is widely shared across Ukraine. While millions have fled, millions more have stayed. If President Zelensky’s government abandons sovereignty to secure peace, the sense of betrayal in Ukraine will be profound. If Zelensky keeps fighting, even without American backing, boys like Roman will one day get their wish to face Russia —but at a serious disadvantage on the battlefield.
Roman’s group merged with the others in Maidan Square as the sun set over Kyiv. The teenagers were becoming scratchy, pulling at their facemasks and drooping as they tried to stand to attention and listen to patriotic speeches. Veterans on the street hobbled over on crutches to watch. At the exact moment the sun disappeared, an air raid siren began to sound. The boys didn’t flinch. They started singing the Ukrainian national anthem to drown out the noise.
Will Lloyd is a news reporter for The Sunday Times. He has reported from Israel and Ukraine, covered general elections and interviewed Michel Houellebecq, Keanu Reeves and Yuval Noah Harari. He lives in Bloomsbury with a framed photograph of Virginia Woolf. Unfortunately he has been unable to get it signed.