Back in Town

Hi. This newsletter is coming to you from Kyiv! I arrived here a few weeks ago for a reporting trip. It’s been a wild ride since then, and I'll share the first impressions of my journey at the end of this newsletter. But first, sitting in a coffee shop, surrounded by the sound of 2000’s indie music and the sputtering of diesel generators, I’ll try to summarize the political and military developments of the last month:

The Peace Summit

Last month marked the end of a long "diplomacy marathon" for Ukraine that culminated in the Global Peace Summit in Switzerland. Since I’m no expert on international relations, I won't go into the details of the Summit. But I can give you the basics: 

Delegations of almost a hundred countries met at the plush Bürgenstock resort - but Russia wasn't among the countries invited: the point of the conference wasn't to achieve peace by Sunday evening, but to get a process moving and build a broad coalition behind a Ukrainian vision for peace. A vision that includes Ukraine getting back all of its territory, receiving serious security guarantees and being compensated for the damage it sustained. These goals were at least partly achieved, as about 80 countries backed Ukraine's "territorial integrity" in a joint communiqué. President Zelensky’s hope for a significant increase in support from the Global South, however, proved elusive. The next steps of this diplomatic initiative aren’t clear yet. But further summits seem likely, at some point also involving Russia.

In response to the conference in Switzerland, Putin - for the first time in two years - announced his demands for negotiations involving Russia. They are:

• Ukraine must give up five of its regions which Russia calls its own. This would include thousands of square kilometers of territory Ukraine has so far successfully defended, including major cities like Kherson, Kramatorsk and Zaporizhia.
• Ukraine must also give up on joining Nato.

Even if you take this offer at face value - which is generous, considering Putin's track record - these demands are untenable for the Ukrainian government. Not only would it hand over almost a quarter of its country to an aggressor, including large areas which Russia has no imminent prospect of capturing. Also, Ukraine can’t conceivably enter a peace deal without credible guarantees for protection by its allies in case of future Russian attacks. Otherwise, any peace deal would just give Russia time to regroup - while the western aid Ukraine depends on inevitably slows down. And it will be very difficult for Ukraine to get such guarantees without actually becoming a member of Nato. 

Additional support

While Ukraine gained few new allies during the last month, the country's current partners have increased their assistance. Support announcements were made at a number of high-level gatherings preceding the conference in Switzerland, most notably the G7 summit in Italy. Some of them symbolic in nature - like the many speeches made and security agreements signed. But some of them very real: The strengthening of air defenses seems to make real progress, notably including the additional "Patriot" systems Ukraine has long been pleading for. This should help protect the few Ukrainian power stations that haven’t been bombed to bits yet. And one development in particular has the potential to be a “game changer”: 

Unfreezing $50 billion

On June 14, the G7 countries jointly announced an agreement "in principle" for providing Ukraine with a loan worth $50 billion, backed by profits from frozen assets of Russia's central bank. Which is a complicated way of using the over $300 billion in Russian funds that are frozen in Western countries to help Ukraine - while kinda sorta maybe allowing Russia to get the assets back one day. In practice, this is a huge step that would have been unthinkable two years ago. And according to Vladyslav Rashkovan of the IMF, the agreement was everything but assured even a week before the announcement.

A lot of details, ranging from critical to rather technical, still need to be worked out, notably whether more of the $300 billion in frozen Russian assets will be used to help Ukraine in the future. Nonetheless, $50 billion is a very substantial amount of money. At the very least, this sum all but guarantees the funding for Ukraine's war effort throughout 2025 - even if the US should not send any more aid. Which is all the more significant because Russia is expected to start running out of old Soviet tanks by then.

At The Front

The battlefield hasn't changed dramatically since my last update. The Russian offensive near Kharkiv has stalled, with Russian forces bogged down in and around the city of Vovchansk. And in Donetsk Oblast, although Russian forces continue to gain ground, they haven’t been able to take any critical positions yet.

While Russia still has more reserves to deploy, Ukraine's chances of weathering the current offensive without major losses of territory are increasing.

Overall, recent developments, both internationally and on the battlefield, leave Ukraine in a much stronger position than two months ago.

Still missing, however, is a clear end goal for the Ukrainian war effort. Which comes as no surprise: the Ukrainian government was hardly in a position to formulate such a goal until recently, not knowing if the Americans were going to abandon them. 

Back in Kyiv

As mentioned above, I’m sending you this newsletter from Kyiv. It feels genuinely healing for my soul to be back. It has been awesome to see my friends again. To hear them talk about their friend group dramas, to learn about new boyfriends and even a new husband! About stressful exams and attained degrees. To not only see Kyiv in the news after missile attacks, but to experience the city in all its unbreakable beauty. To walk through the northwestern Podilskyi district, where random greenery seems to take up as much space as the buildings. To hang out in the hipster coffee shops that make up most of Podil. And to visit the east bank of the Dnipro river, where a friend of mine now works at a nice European-style restaurant, hidden between a slightly depressing sea of Soviet high-rises. 

I enjoy walking the main street on Friday evenings, even though that’s considered “cringe” by most of my high-brow young Ukrainian friends, and watching the local teenagers hang out in front of the McDonalds and vibing to bad street music. Some of them probably speaking Russian instead of Ukrainian, because even in wartime, antisocial teenagers won't do what they're supposed to.

But as nice as it is to be back, it's also clear that things have changed. During my visit last autumn, there was still some vague optimism about the war ending in a year or two. Now, that optimism is largely gone. And problems for another day are rapidly becoming problems for tomorrow: The question is not if my young male friends will be sent to the front, but when. Recruitment posters are everywhere you look, and people with prosthetics have become a much more frequent sight on the streets of Kyiv. 

Over the next weeks I'll take you through wartime Ukraine with a series of shorter, more spontaneous and less “polished” blog posts. I will write about electricity blackouts and sheltering McDonald's crews, about how I lost my pants due to Russian airstrikes, and whatever else I’ll encounter, experience or stumble upon during my journey through this beautiful country. 

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