Anna Medvedieva, centre, with her parents Olexandra, right, and Arkadii, left, near their home which was destroyed during a Russian attack, on Wednesday.Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
Oleksandra and Arkadii Pobol weren’t home when the Russian missile slammed into their apartment, a modest Soviet block on the southwest edge of Kyiv. That night two weeks ago, they’d decided to stay at their little summer cottage outside the capital, where their daughter, Anna Medvedieva, had joined them.
That choice saved their lives: Twenty-nine of their neighbours were not so lucky. When the missile struck in the early morning hours of July 31, it crushed all nine floors of the building, leaving entire families dead under the rubble. And it destroyed the cozy eighth-floor suite where Mr. and Ms. Pobol had lived for 31 years, along with their most precious possessions, including a family collection of hand-stitched embroidery stretching back five generations.
“The Russians not only attacked our apartment, but they attacked our memories, our history,” Ms. Pobol, a 64-year-old retired engineer, said on Wednesday, as the couple and their daughter stood gazing up at the shattered walls where their home used to be.
This Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with U.S. President Donald Trump in Alaska for a summit that Mr. Trump has said is aimed at securing a ceasefire after more than three years of war.
Ms. Pobol, asked about the coming meeting, which excludes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, tightened her lips and shook her head. She pointed to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which the U.S. and Russia pledged to respect Ukraine’s security in exchange for Kyiv giving up its large stockpile of Soviet-era nuclear weapons.
Arkadii Podol points to the front door of his family's apartment, which is all that remains of their home after it was destroyed in a Russian attack.Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
“What negotiations can you have without Ukraine?” Ms. Pobol said.
“I don’t expect anything. What kind of negotiations can there be between two nuclear states, about the third state that voluntarily gave up its nuclear weapons? Don’t they know that people are dying in Ukraine, that children and elderly people are dying? Of course, they know everything. It’s surrealistic to pretend not to know it.”
Standing in the shadow of their ruined home, the couple’s daughter agreed.
“I don’t think [Mr. Putin] wants peace,” said Ms. Medvedieva, 42. “He wants the whole of Ukraine, and he wants to get as much as he can from this deal … so I really hope the American President sees Putin not for his words, but for his deeds, and sees this huge lie.”
Since the attack that destroyed the Pobols’ building, the skies over Ukraine’s capital have been relatively quiet. Yet the city is still reeling from the tense nights of June and July, when Kyiv was regularly bombarded with massive drone and missile attacks that rocked the city for up to eight hours straight, crushed multiple apartment blocks, and left dozens dead and injured.
Now, with the looming Trump-Putin summit, those attacks take on a different context. The intensified strikes can be understood as part of a continuing psychological “shaping operation,” said analyst and Ukrainian military veteran Mykhailo Samus, director of the New Geopolitics Research Network. It’s an effort to exhaust Ukrainian civilians, and ramp up pressure on Mr. Zelensky to capitulate to Russian demand, he said.
A memorial to victims of a Russian attack.Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
For Ukraine, Mr. Samus said, the Trump-Putin talks will likely change little: “This is the problem for Trump to understand, that Ukraine is not going to discuss territories,” he said.
“One of the main tasks for Putin for this summit is to get more time for continuing his attempt on the front. Because the situation in Russian economy is catastrophic, and I think that in autumn we’ll have absolutely different estimations of what’s going in Russia.”
Still, exclusion from the talks puts Ukraine’s government in a difficult position. Trump and his envoys have made statements suggesting “territorial swaps,” and Russia’s ceasefire demands call for Ukrainian troops to withdraw from four partly occupied regions – including cities and villages firmly under Ukraine’s control.
Yet days before the summit, Ukrainian officials were still in the dark about the details.
“When Trump is talking about territorial swaps, it’s not quite clear what he exactly means by that, because any territorial concessions on the part of Ukraine are absolutely impossible. It’s against our constitution, and there is no legal mechanism to do,” said Oleksandr Merezhko, a member of Ukraine’s parliament and chair of its foreign relations committee, in an interview Tuesday.
“I think that Putin is completely aware that such proposal is unacceptable” to Ukraine, Mr. Merezhko said. “But he is deliberately pushing this proposal in order to discredit Ukraine in the eyes of Trump, and to give to Trump a pretext to walk away from negotiations.”
Opinion: A stronger Ukraine would be the only acceptable outcome of the Alaska summit
Regardless of the outcome of Friday’s summit, it may add to the mounting pressure Ukraine faces from multiple directions – including from its own citizens. A Gallup poll conducted in early July – during the time of intensified Russian strikes – found that 69 per cent of Ukrainians now support a negotiated end to the war “as soon as possible,” rather than continuing to fight “until victory,” a near-total reversal from 2022.
But a poll question doesn’t capture the nuance of many Ukrainians’ views on how the country should move forward – or the pain of navigating what can seem like impossible decisions.
At the strike site, as Ms. Medvedieva pointed out where her bedroom once stood, a single tear ran down her cheek. Over the past three years, she has worked tirelessly to raise money to buy drones and equipment for the Ukrainian army, attended 16 funerals of friends killed in combat, and now had her own family home destroyed by Russia.
“Part of me wants a ceasefire,” said Ms. Medvedieva. “The other part of me does not trust a ceasefire. Like my dad says, I know the deals signed with Russia aren’t worth the paper they’re signed on … but I really want my friends to come back alive. I really want people to have their families back. I really want people not to die anymore, but we don’t want to live in Russia.”
As the family walked away from the wreckage of their home, they made it clear their spirit – and their vision for Ukraine – remained unbroken. In fact, Ms. Pobol said, if she was younger and her daughter allowed it, she’d join the armed forces herself.
“I want Ukraine to be as independent and great as we love it. And I want each boot of Russian soldiers to vanish from our territory,” she said.