Once, in what now feels like an age ago, I described the Donbas coal-mining town of Dobropillia as a ‘safe haven’.

Dobropillia, characterized by its plain terrain and a large slag heap, became a refuge for thousands who escaped conflicts farther east. In 2023, the Daily Mail’s Ukraine Appeal contributed by providing motorized wheelchairs to the town’s small hospital as it was deemed safe.

No longer.

Earlier this month, just three days before the President of the United States welcomed President Putin of Russia with a red carpet ceremony in Alaska, Kremlin forces broke through Ukrainian defenses near Dobropillia, advancing by six miles.

They even managed to cut the critical Dobropillia-Kramatorsk highway before being pushed back.

Putin seeks to gain control over the entire Donbas region, as outlined in a potential peace deal facilitated by Trump. Trump has expressed support for transferring—what he refers to as ‘reshuffling’—Ukrainian territory to Russia to achieve a ‘deal’ to conclude the conflict.

Ukraine would be given ‘security guarantees’ but not be allowed to join Nato. If Ukraine was obstructive the supply of weapons would stop.

Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney joins Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife, Olena Zelenska, as they take part in a wreath laying ceremony in Kyiv on Sunday 

Much has been written about this extraordinary Alaskan summit. But what of the men – and women – who are on the ground, fighting the Russians? Some of them have been at war for more than a decade now. 

They have shed blood and witnessed countless comrades killed and maimed in the defence of their homeland against a far more powerful enemy.

Exhausted, would they now support the terms of a Trump-Putin deal, in order to attain ‘peace’? Soldiers have been the pawns of political compromise since history began.

I spoke to a number of Ukrainians on the frontline; among them the defiant, the desperate, the weary. Most are psychologically damaged. All are cynical. They hate not only Putin but Russia. Trump is not well spoken of, either.

Whatever happens, Ukraine has already demonstrated an extraordinary feat of arms – to have kept Russia at bay for so long.

But the soldiers are not in it for moral victories. This is an existential war. They want Ukraine’s freedom from tyranny. Peace for them still seems a distant dream.

President Donald Trump greets Russian president Vladimir Putin in Alaska earlier this month 

Not all have been fighting for years. Last week, I was disturbed to learn that among those Ukrainian troops on the critical Dobropillia front is my friend and former colleague, Daria.

Born in Kramatorsk, she was a postgraduate journalism student in Kyiv at the time of the full-scale Russian invasion. After that, she worked for a medical charity delivering aid to frontline areas and as a field producer for the Mail’s Frontline film series. But earlier this year, Daria joined the Ukrainian army and is now a private in an assault battalion.

‘The most important thing I want to say is that I, and most of my comrades with whom I discussed this, consider territorial concessions a betrayal,’ she tells me. ‘A betrayal to themselves and the betrayal of those guys who died or gave their health defending the country.

‘In the fourth year of a full-scale war, a lot of soldiers have lost that enthusiasm and motivation. But almost everyone I know who has been in the armed forces for a long time holds the opinion that they cannot betray the sacrifices made by their brothers during this war.

‘The appeasement of Putin by the voluntary abandonment of the remnants of the Donetsk region, including my home city, would in my opinion lead to mass protests in the country.

Last week, Richard Pendlebury was disturbed to learn that among those Ukrainian troops on the critical Dobropillia front is his friend and former colleague, Daria, who joined the Ukrainian army and is now a private in an assault battalion

‘It would indicate the absolute inability of the Ukrainian authorities and the world community to protect the interests of the Ukrainian people in the international arena. Such a decision will be an absolute concession to the tyrant. As Churchill famously said: “You cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth.” ’

Her Churchill reference is typical of the Ukrainian military mindset and its opposition to appeasement. The UK’s experience in the Second World War is often held up by Ukrainians as an example of what can be achieved with backs to the wall. In that respect Churchill is a totem for Ukrainians.

It’s clear they do not have the same admiration for Trump.

Mykhailo, drone operator with the 58th brigade, said of the US President: ‘His desire to bring both sides to peace is of course good, if it is sincere. But unfortunately, he knows little or nothing about Ukraine and the Russian Federation.

‘Where I am fighting, the enemy has a technical advantage, an advantage in people, an advantage in UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles]. He does not spare the means to destroy our guys. Everything works for them and works well. [The Russians] send small infantry groups forward. If it did not work out this time, they will send the next group.

Richard Pendlebury (far right) and photographer Jamie Wiseman (far left) with, from left, Daria, fixer Olex and Ukrainian soldier Makar

‘I think that they will not reject the idea of capturing Ukraine, because all they have known for the last 100 years is to wage such wars without sparing the lives of their own soldiers. This is truly a war of annihilation. It is not about Ukrainian nationalists but about some existential hatred towards us. They will not drop this matter.’

Makar, the deputy commander of an assault battalion in Donetsk, has an equally bleak view. ‘Zelensky is actually a hostage of the situation,’ he says. ‘Everyone dictates to him what to do. 

Meanwhile, Putin has such a psychotype that easily tolerates war, murders – he will not stop. It just won’t happen like that.

‘I don’t know what exactly they will agree on regarding the exchange of territories, maybe rare minerals, or perhaps something else. Let’s be realistic – Ukraine does not have that many resources left. 

Yes, they will give us weapons, but who will use these means? People remain the main element on the battlefield. Who controls all these means, who shoots, who aims the cannons? We really don’t have any people left.’

What does he expect to come from the current negotiations? ‘I think there will be some kind of freeze in hostilities for a short time, so that the Russian Federation can build up some forces and so that we can also rest.

‘A couple of years after Trump’s term ends, all this will flare up again. But next time we won’t be able to cope. Every day dozens of men cross the border (to escape conscription), every day dozens of men die on the front, and there are no replenishments.’

Kruger is the middle-aged deputy commander of a fire support company in the 41st Brigade. He has been wounded several times. The last occasion we met was at a cardiac hospital in Kyiv where he was undergoing a heart procedure before returning to the front.

Kruger is very cynical about the summit and the chances of a just peace for Ukraine. ‘Trump is Putin’s puppet,’ he says. ‘All these supposedly peaceful negotiations have only one meaning for Putin: he needs a break for about a year to prepare the army and weapons. 

Putin’s calculation is very simple: a truce, even along the line of combat contact. But Russia immediately begins to prepare a second invasion, and we cancel martial law at the request of the United States and hold elections.

‘Elections are always a fierce confrontation here. This time, Russian agents under the guise of heroic corps commanders, battalion commanders and brigade commanders will begin to muddy the waters. And it will be very good if it does not end in a civil war.’

He believes the Ukrainian army will begin to disintegrate if there is a truce and martial law is lifted. ‘The first to flee will be the mobilized, and then others. “What’s the necessity to sit in a trench?” they will argue. “The war is over!”’

‘And we will have such a fun year – until the next war begins. However, next time there will be no volunteers.’

Other servicemen watched the welcome of the Russian president on American soil with amusement and disbelief.

In Daria’s increasingly threatened hometown of Kramatorsk, locksmith Dmytro Kotov faces losing everything he has built with his wife Svitlana Kotova and their 14-year-old boy.

There has been much talk of the strategic gains Putin would make were Washington to strong-arm Kyiv into ceding the roughly 20 per cent of the Donbas his military has failed to seize by force in 12 years of trying.

And when Donald Trump spoke breathlessly of ‘land swaps’, it was the lives of Dmytro and hundreds of thousands of others like him that he was referring to. They would be forced to decide whether to live under Russian rule, or become refugees.

‘I would miss the life I’ve lived here,’ Dmytro says, knowing he and his wife, both 39, would be forced to flee – not least as their son has cerebral palsy.

‘We would never stay under Russia, their rule is brutal,’ he says, his voice bristling with anger.

‘My child would never pass their so-called “filtration”. He sings Ukrainian songs, he loves them. With our position, we simply cannot stay.’

‘You always miss the place where you spent your days – where you walked, worked, where your life happened,’ Dmytro says. ‘It’s the familiar streets and pathways, the memories are tied to them – that’s where all the emotions lie.’

Little wonder, then, that Dmytro watched the spectacle in Alaska two weeks ago with contempt.

‘America was once considered the greatest country in the world, the number one power – a so-called policeman of the world,’ he said. ‘Yet now that “policeman” turns not into a protector but into a businessman. A ruthless one, who pushes and pressures others just to advance his own business ideas.

‘Frankly, he is not far from Putin, who acts like a street thug.’

But those who live here still believe in their countrymen.

‘We have our own path,’ Dmytro says. ‘Let him say whatever he wants. We must fight for what is ours — for our homes, for our courtyards, for every single piece of our land.

‘The war will end only when one of the countries is exhausted, no longer able to fight. Hopefully, it will be Russia that runs out of strength.’

• Additional reporting by Oleksandr Kostiuchenko and Olha Cherenkova