{"id":327933,"date":"2025-08-08T13:07:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T13:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/327933\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T13:07:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T13:07:12","slug":"ukrainian-troops-have-little-hope-for-peace-as-trumps-deadline-for-russia-arrives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/327933\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukrainian troops have little hope for peace as Trump’s deadline for Russia arrives"},"content":{"rendered":"

DNIPROPETROVSK, Ukraine — Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield expressed little hope for a diplomatic solution to the war with Russia<\/a>, as U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s Friday deadline<\/a> for the Kremlin to stop the killing arrived and he eyed a possible summit meeting<\/a> with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the conflict.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s efforts to pressure Putin have so far delivered no progress<\/a>. Russia\u2019s bigger army is slowly advancing deeper into Ukraine at great cost in troops and armor while it relentlessly bombards Ukrainian cities. Russia and Ukraine are far apart on their terms for peace.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian forces are locked in intense battles along the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line that snakes from northeast to southeast Ukraine. The Pokrovsk city area of the eastern Donetsk region is taking the brunt of punishment as Russia looks to break out from there into the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region. Ukraine has significant manpower shortages.<\/p>\n

Intense fighting is also taking place in Ukraine’s northern Sumy border region, where Ukrainian forces are engaging Russian soldiers to prevent reinforcements being sent from there to Donetsk.<\/p>\n

In the Pokrovsk area, a commander said he believes Moscow isn\u2019t interested in peace.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is impossible to negotiate with them. The only option is to defeat them,\u201d Buda, the Spartan Brigade commander, told The Associated Press. He used only his call sign, in keeping with the rules of the Ukrainian military.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would like them to agree and for all this to stop, but Russia will not agree to that; it does not want to negotiate. So the only option is to defeat them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In the southern Zaporizhzhia region, a howitzer commander using the call sign Warsaw, said troops are determined to thwart Russia\u2019s invasion.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are on our land, we have no way out,\u201d he said. \u201cSo we stand our ground, we have no choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump said Thursday that he would meet with Putin even if the Russian leader will not meet with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That has stoked fears in Europe that Ukraine could be sidelined in efforts to stop the continent’s biggest conflict since World War II.<\/p>\n

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said in an assessment Thursday that \u201cPutin remains uninterested in ending his war and is attempting to extract bilateral concessions from the United States without meaningfully engaging in a peace process.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPutin continues to believe that time is on Russia\u2019s side and that Russia can outlast Ukraine and the West,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n said Friday that Europe should take the lead in efforts to end the conflict.<\/p>\n

Orb\u00e1n said the leaders of Germany and France should go to Moscow \u201cto negotiate on behalf of Europe.\u201d Otherwise, \u201cwe will be sidelined in managing the security issues of our own continent,\u201d Orb\u00e1n told Hungary\u2019s state broadcaster.<\/p>\n

Orb\u00e1n, who is a harsh critic of the European Union to which his country belongs, said Europe\u2019s concerns that a Trump-Putin summit might not address the continent\u2019s interests meant it should seize the diplomatic initiative.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis war cannot be ended on the front line, no solution can be concluded on the battlefield,\u201d he said. \u201cThis war must be ended by diplomats, politicians, leaders at the negotiating table.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Samya Kullab in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow AP\u2019s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/russia-ukraine<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DNIPROPETROVSK, Ukraine — Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield expressed little hope for a diplomatic solution to the war…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[118141,3907,7138,2000,299,4179,285,7661,657,7660,10673,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-327933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-118141","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-bombings","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","16":"tag-ukraine","17":"tag-war-and-unrest","18":"tag-washington-news","19":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114993302577305732","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}