As Putin, Trump debate Ukraine's future borders, Donetsk Oblast residents are split on what they would accept to end the war
Dust and smoke rise from a destroyed building after a Russian shelling of Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on July 31, 2025. (Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu via Getty Images)
War
KRAMATORSK, Donetsk Oblast — U.S. President Donald Trump began to actively push Ukraine to accept losing its land and people to Russia, following years of brutal, all-out war.
People in Kramatorsk, the largest Ukrainian-held city in Donetsk Oblast — a region that Russia wants and Trump is thinking of handing over in full — have met the recent news with unease.
Those who spoke with the Kyiv Independent, however, still maintain a fragile hope for a lasting peace — something this region hasn't seen for over 11 years.
At their meeting on Aug. 15 in Alaska — 8,000 kilometers east of Donetsk Oblast, the fate of which is to be discussed — Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will talk over a peace plan that would see Ukraine surrendering new territories to Russia.
The proposed plan would see Kyiv withdraw its troops from two of the partly occupied Ukrainian regions — Donetsk and Luhansk, according to a source in Ukraine's President's Office, who was part of the team briefed on the discussion Putin had with Trump's Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in Moscow.
“Kramatorsk is Ukraine, it was and it will be, ceding territory is dishonorable.”
Nataliia Petrukhina, a 55-year-old gardener at a park in central Kramatorsk in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, poses for a photo after finishing a shift on Aug. 12, 2025. (Asami Terajima/The Kyiv Independent)
Many of the people whose fate is to be decided half a world away disagree.
Life is still there in Kramatorsk, a city 16 kilometers from the front that has seen brutal Russian bombardment and often drone attacks. Its most popular cafes were comfortably busy with residents and off-duty soldiers, supermarkets bustling with customers, and kids' laughter still echoing through well-maintained parks even as the air raid sirens go off at times.
Kramatorsk-born gardener Nataliia Petrukhina was getting ready to cycle home after finishing a shift at a park in the city center.
"Kramatorsk is Ukraine, it was and it will be, ceding territory is dishonorable," the 55-year-old told the Kyiv Independent at the park.
President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has not received an invitation to the hastily organized Alaska summit, admitted that he doesn't know what the U.S. and Russia will discuss behind closed doors during Putin's first visit to the U.S. since 2015 — a major victory for Moscow in breaking international isolation.
"It's clear that we are about to be a little bit sold out," an official in the President's Office said on the condition of anonymity due to the topic's sensitivity.
Despite Kramatorsk's relative peace, the front-line situation in Donetsk Oblast had been actively deteriorating elsewhere in the region. Ukrainian open-source battlefield monitoring group DeepState reported a 10-kilometer Russian push over the past few days toward the key highway connecting Kramatorsk with Dobropillia, a town north of fiercely contested Pokrovsk.
For a deputy company commander with the 80th Airborne Brigade, who goes by the callsign "Third" and is originally from the Russian-occupied Donetsk, the memory of watching his hometown being occupied in 2014 is too vivid.
As a soldier fighting mostly in Donetsk Oblast and later elsewhere since 2014, he said that the potential Ukrainian withdrawal from the region is "complete nonsense," but he agrees it may be inevitable for Kyiv, too.
The soldier, who asked his full name not to be disclosed to speak freely on the sensitive matter, admitted that it may be the price that Ukraine has to pay for being the weaker side and for long-standing issues, ranging from corruption to previous close ties with Russia. He stressed that it is important for Ukraine to take it as "a lesson" and to continue training troops and preparing for the next potential war until the external threat disappears.
"No one ever said that life should be fair," Third, who saw his home being occupied by Russia twice, from Donetsk to Mariupol, told the Kyiv Independent.
"There must be a price to pay for everything — this will be ours. But we must prepare for future battles."
A Ukrainian officer named Artem, who asked his unit and position not to be disclosed to speak with the press without authorization, said he disagreed. He is from the town of Enerhodar in southeastern Zaporizhzhia Oblast, occupied since 2022, and he believed that Ukraine is ready for an even longer war against a much better-resourced foe, even if the Western support gets cut off.
“Too many people have already fallen for us to just sign some peace agreement and walk away, and that's not a victory.”
Ukrainian officer Artem, originally from the Russian-occupied Enerhodar, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, photographed in Kramatorsk, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, on Aug. 12, 2025. (Asami Terajima/The Kyiv Independent)
Artem believes that the war can only end with the complete liberation of Ukraine. He said it all comes down to whether his army command decides based on the potential political agreement. But he admitted that he couldn't imagine Russia slowing down its offensives anytime soon, as it has the resources and ambition to keep going.
"This is not the first international meeting with the leadership of the aggressor, so I don't believe that there will be some breakthrough in peace talks," Artem told the Kyiv Independent, stressing that Moscow's demands are "impossible."
"Too many people have already fallen for us to just sign some peace agreement and walk away, and that's not a victory."
While the residents and soldiers remained divided on how they believed the war should end, they understood that no matter what they did, it was up to a handful of people far away to decide their future.
Smoking cigarettes one after another on the steps in front of her cafe near the central square, Iryna Zarubina, 64, said she just wanted the war to be over, one way or another.
Shaken by a July 31 Russian missile attack on an apartment building just nearby that killed seven people, most of whom she knew well, including an elderly woman who always fed the street cats, Zarubina said she tries not to follow the news because it is too depressing.
But like the other Kramatorsk residents who spoke to the Kyiv Independent, she doesn't plan to leave her city anytime soon, even as the attacks intensify.
"We are very tired," Zarubina told the Kyiv Independent.
