Published by The i Paper (11th August, 2025)
Donetsk used to be a bustling city at the heart of a thriving industrial region. It was one of Ukraine’s most prosperous urban centres, its streets filled with smart shops and cafés as seen by English football fans who travelled there during the 2012 European Championships. Today, it is such a grim place that residents get filthy water in their taps for only two to four hours every three days, leaving families scavenging for supplies from ponds while children plead on video to “Uncle Vova” – Russia’s President Vladimir Putin – for “the simplest miracle – water in our homes”.
Last month, even pro-Kremlin media outlets published a letter written by residents that accused the Russian-backed separatists, who have administered this occupied region since 2014, of failing to address a water crisis that is now “a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe”. Much of the water that does arrive is undrinkable. Some nearby towns only get tap water every six days. The price of bottled water has shot up in the summer heat, beyond reach of many pensioners. The war is among the causes of this calamity, of course – but it was intensified by the corruption and incompetence of the gangsters running this region.
Images of queues of people waiting stoically for water trucks in the heart of Europe – a stark echo of life in the Soviet Union – expose again the grotesque realities of Putin’s regime. They show why Ukrainians fight heroically to resist his push to seize their country, seeking to retain freedoms we take for granted. Yet fear is growing that once again, the West – dominated by a naive, self-serving bully in the White House – will betray them. Just as in 2014, when Putin stole Crimea, and just as in 1938, when a British prime minister appeased another fascist dictatorship with such terrible consequences for our continent.
Donald Trump returned to power promising to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours but, as so often with this mendacious character, he was telling lies. Instead, the elected leader of the world’s most powerful nation serves Putin’s cause with terrible consistency – whether parroting Kremlin propaganda, backing Russia at the United Nations or publicly humiliating Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. He seems determined to remove sanctions on Russia, restore relations with Moscow and win the Nobel Peace Prize; regardless of the cost for bloodstained Ukraine in lost terrain, the impact on Europe by assisting a despotic enemy waging war by all means possible, and any ensuing damage done to the cause of global democracy.
I would love to believe recent claims that the White House has become frustrated by Putin’s intransigence and that we are on the brink of peace in our time. I have, after all, spent much of the past 11 years reporting on Russia’s barbarism in Ukraine. But all of Trump’s threats have proved hollow so far, culminating in the supposed deadline last Friday for imposing harsher sanctions on Moscow if it did not end attacks on civilians. Instead, Bucha – scene of some of the worst atrocities – was shelled again. Indeed, all of Trump’s actions seem to play into Russian hands. So now he offers a summit in Alaska, saying he believes Putin “wants to see peace”, even amid reports the US President wants to cede big chunks of another country to this cruel war criminal.
Putin has secured something he has long wanted: a one-to-one meeting with Trump that displays his power to his people, shatters Russia’s pariah status and leaves Europe isolated. Even the choice for this meeting of Alaska – part of the Russian empire before its sale to the US in 1867 – drips with disturbing symbolism, clearly reflecting that borders can change and terrain can be traded.
Putin wants a deal to secure his land grabs that Trump will then push on to Ukraine, hoping Kyiv will be abandoned by Washington if it rejects his unpalatable terms. And if the talks flounder, the Kremlin will order its troops to keep grinding forward on the front line, hoping Ukraine runs out of soldiers faster than the stumbling Russian economy runs out of steam.
Trump and his negotiator Steve Witkoff are property barons who lack any sense of history, let alone knowledge of eastern Europe or democratic ideals, so they view peace talks like New York real estate deals as they discuss carving up another country with a menacing imperialist dictator. Trump suggests “some swapping of territories” may take place amid reports that Russia is demanding all of the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces in exchange for a ceasefire. After more than three years of a war Putin thought would be over in three days, his forces are making small gains but at a massive cost. Bear in mind they are still fighting over the ruins of Pokrovsk – a city under attack for 13 months and only 50 miles from Donetsk.
Ukraine has thrown a ring of steel around Donetsk’s larger cities such as Kramatorsk and Slovyansk. So why would Zelensky agree to hand them over to their hated foe? Particularly when such a move is constitutionally prohibited and trading of Ukrainian-controlled land is still opposed by almost eight in 10 citizens, despite such intense grief and weariness amid this unwanted war. Yet Europe – frantically trying to influence this erratic US President’s latest move – may also face a pivotal moment. For how do its leaders respond if Trump and Putin try to impose a pitiful “peace” deal that rewards Russia for aggression, especially if it lacks any real security guarantees for either Ukraine or the rest of the continent?
This is a war Ukraine could have won with sufficient Western military support and sanctions. Perhaps Trump will surprise us by securing an effective deal or really turning on Russia. I fear it is more likely both Ukraine and Europe will face an era-defining decision: whether to capitulate to an American president who is so brazenly contemptuous of democracy, or to stand firm in the fight to save our continent from Russia and its autocratic allies. To paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill, it may be the first sip from a bitter cup on offer that marks only the beginning of our reckoning.