translated from Ukrainian

Між фронтом і полем дискусії: Тарас Білоус про війну та перспективи миру

Taras Bilous argues that Ukraine now faces the grim necessity of seeking a ceasefire without accepting Russia’s terms, while insisting that only the fall of Putin’s regime can make any peace durable.

Commons · By Taras Bilous · 24 February 2026 · read the original in Ukrainian →

From the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, historian and Commons editor Taras Bilous joined the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. His letters and articles, published at the start of the great war, sparked a sharp polemic with Western leftists over armed resistance. For the fourth anniversary of the full-scale war, Taras gave an interview to the American left-wing magazine Jacobin. Read, in Ukrainian on Commons, about how his position has changed over these years.

You have been in the army for almost four years now. What does your work consist of at present? How are you feeling?

I am a drone operator; I do aerial reconnaissance. Right now I have been granted leave to recover from a wound, and thanks to that I have more free time than I have had at any point in the past three years. I feel well, thank you. A fragment from a mine remains in my liver, but overall I have already fully recovered. For now I am in Kyiv with my parents; my leave is coming to an end.

In February 2022 you wrote a well-known letter to Western leftists, criticizing them for the position that “the main enemy is at home,” as well as for their lack of solidarity with armed resistance to the Russian invasion. How do you assess the situation now, after the start of the negotiations initiated by Trump?

The circumstances have changed, and accordingly my position has changed somewhat too. But I still think that what I wrote then was broadly correct. And I think Trump’s failure last year with peace negotiations confirms what I wrote at the time: “A call for diplomacy means nothing in itself unless it addresses negotiating positions, concrete concessions, and the readiness of the parties to abide by any agreement they sign.” Take a ceasefire, for example: since April of last year Ukraine has agreed to a full and unconditional ceasefire, but Russia still has not agreed. But who on the left is saying that Russia must be forced to agree to a ceasefire?

I think it is only recently that one can say real negotiations are genuinely under way. What was happening over the course of last year was a show for Trump. He barged into it without understanding the situation, with foolish illusions, and in the first year of his presidency he only made everything worse.

When Trump won, I thought that, most likely, the situation would get worse for us. But, to be honest, somewhere deep down I had a faint hope that perhaps a miracle might still happen. Although Trump is the last person from whom I would want to receive help, I, like other Ukrainians, want more than anything in the world for this damned war finally to end. Unfortunately, it soon became obvious that nothing good should be expected.

What matters is that Trump became president when both Ukraine and Russia were already exhausted by the war, even if not to the extent they are now. After the failure of the 2023 counteroffensive, the argument that “we cannot leave our people under occupation” became irrelevant. Over the course of 2024, sentiment in favor of freezing the conflict gradually grew in Ukraine, including in the army. Regardless of who won the presidential election in the United States, negotiations would have begun anyway. And it seems the Ukrainian government understood this: the 2024 Peace Summit in Switzerland and the Kursk operation were, among other things, attempts to strengthen its position ahead of negotiations.

It seems to me that many Western commentators do not understand that the main reason for Zelensky’s change of position on a ceasefire was not Trump’s pressure, but the shift in Ukrainians’ mood and the recognition of the reality on the battlefield. After all, Zelensky had already changed his position in November 2024, agreeing to the possibility of freezing the conflict without the return of all territories. Everything was moving in that direction: since the spring of 2024, if I heard references in the army to the “1991 borders,” it was only in a sarcastic tone.

Did the mood in the army change as well?

Yes, of course. Perhaps even earlier than in society as a whole. The first conversations about how it would not be a bad thing to freeze the conflict I heard back in the autumn of 2022, from guys who had fought in the infantry on the Bakhmut front and were later transferred to a rear unit. But at that time these were isolated sentiments; in society as a whole, optimism prevailed after the successful Kharkiv operation. That gradually changed over the course of 2024.

And how did people in your unit react to Trump’s initiatives?

At first there were different reactions: on the one hand, fears that Trump would end military aid; on the other, hopes that the war would finally end. But gradually people stopped talking about it. When the twenty-eight points appeared last autumn, some international journalists asked me what ordinary soldiers thought of that plan. I had nothing to tell them, because it seemed no one was paying attention to it anymore. In general, one should bear in mind that soldiers do not discuss such topics all that often; usually everyone is absorbed in the routine of service. For my team, for example, the most acute problem at that time was mice in the dugout, not Trump.

So let us return to the negotiations. Trump became president when Ukraine was ready to agree to freezing the conflict.

Yes, but to achieve an end to the war in that situation, he needed to increase pressure on Russia; instead we got the farce of a red carpet for Putin in Alaska. Obviously he does not care about Ukraine, and he believed he could quickly achieve peace by forcing it to agree to Russian terms. Well, he understood neither Ukraine nor Russia, and if he really wanted to end the war quickly, his actions were counterproductive. After all this, Trump can write a book titled How Not to Negotiate.

Trump surrendered one negotiating position after another, abandoned the demand for an unconditional ceasefire, and gave Putin what he wanted: recognition and an exit from international isolation. In essence, Putin led him by the nose for an entire year, and it seems only after Putin’s “history lessons” in Alaska did Trump begin to understand what he was dealing with. But now the Russians reject every proposal by invoking the “spirit of Anchorage.” Trump gave them that himself.

After all, what real grounds are there for thinking that Putin has abandoned his original plan to destroy the Ukrainian state? The Kremlin still speaks of the “root causes of the conflict.” The demand that Ukraine surrender the unoccupied part of Donbas to Russia without a fight may be only a step along that path.

But earlier you said that real negotiations have finally begun. Why do you think so?

First, we once again have direct negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, not a show in which the “great powers” agree on something to which Ukraine does not consent.

Second, the composition of the delegations has changed, and therefore so has the character of the negotiations. Regardless of the political conditions, important technical issues have to be resolved, including how to monitor a ceasefire regime. It will be better if, by the time political agreements finally become possible, decisions on such technical issues have already been made. But as for political questions, Russia is still putting forward conditions unacceptable to Ukraine, so that track is at a standstill.

Third, in October Trump finally began to put pressure on Russia and imposed new sanctions on Russian oil companies. Of course, this is not enough, but it is something.

And, last but not least, last year the Russian economy finally encountered serious problems and entered stagnation. This is still far from collapse, but their problems are growing. And this is happening in conditions where the greater part of the reserve funds had already been spent in previous years on overcoming the effects of sanctions and developing the military-industrial complex.

All right, and what do you think about one of the most acute issues in the negotiations: security guarantees?

Let us look at things soberly: in conditions of the collapse of the world order, no written security guarantees are reliable. For Ukraine, there are two main security guarantees: the army, and the fact that Russia has suffered such enormous losses in this war. Now they will think a hundred times before attacking us again. As for the negotiations, let us compare them with Istanbul: back then the Russians demanded that the Ukrainian army be limited to 85,000. Now they also want limits on our army, but it seems no one is talking about such ridiculous numbers anymore. In addition, back then they wanted Russia to have a veto over military assistance to Ukraine in the event of aggression, in the treaty on security guarantees. That would have made the treaty no more valuable than the Budapest Memorandum; Ukraine would never have agreed to it. We do not know reliably all the conditions the Russian side is now setting in the negotiations, but it appears they are no longer demanding such a veto.

Some authors still claim that back then, in Istanbul, Ukraine and Russia were close to signing a peace agreement, but Johnson arrived and ruined everything.

I do not understand how one can still repeat that after the publication of the draft treaty on security guarantees and the article by Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko about those negotiations. They show that even in that treaty, the parties’ positions on several key questions diverged very sharply. In addition, territorial questions had not even begun to be discussed then; they were deferred until a personal meeting between Zelensky and Putin. Now territories are being discussed, and that is the most difficult question. Finally, in the view of the Russian left-wing political scientist Ilya Matveev, Charap and Radchenko overestimate Putin’s readiness to agree even to the terms that were being discussed.

As for the role of the West, the main problem was that Western countries refused to give Ukraine the security guarantees the Ukrainian government wanted, and for which it sought to involve the United States and other participants in those negotiations. But even the countries that agreed to provide security guarantees were in effect only promising, in the event of renewed aggression, to do what they were already doing at that moment: supply weapons. Ukraine wanted more. As for those authors who write that Boris Johnson supposedly disrupted the negotiations, it is worth noting: if the West had actually agreed to provide the security guarantees the Ukrainian government wanted, those same authors would have opposed it. For that would have meant that in the event of renewed Russian aggression the West would have had to enter the war on Ukraine’s side.

So, if I understand you correctly, you think that at present the best possible option would be to freeze the conflict. But does that not create major risks?

Of course it is a risk. And the issue is not only the threat of a new war, but also the political, economic, and migration consequences of a frozen conflict. The higher the likelihood of a new war appears in Ukrainians’ eyes, the more people will leave Ukraine after it ends. Incidentally, if plans to station European troops in Ukraine were realized, that would matter not only for preventing new aggression, but also simply for reassuring people. The extent to which Ukraine will be capable of repelling renewed aggression depends not only on the formal terms of an agreement, but also on how society perceives the outcome of the war. Every day we have to pay a very high price for continuing the resistance, and that creates other risks.

We are in a situation where, even if Ukraine is given some formal security guarantees, a new Russian invasion may nevertheless begin some time after a ceasefire, and the conditions of the war for us will be much worse than they are now. That would end with the occupation of a larger part of Ukraine. But if the current war continues, there is also the risk that at some point the front may crumble, and the result will be the same. I do not think it is a good idea to continue a war of attrition until we find out who has the greater margin of endurance.

The situation at the front is not so critical that we should agree to Russian terms. Many of them are unacceptable, since they will only increase the risk of a new invasion. This is especially true of the demand to surrender the unoccupied part of Donbas without a fight; this is not simply a question of territory. But we also cannot afford to set maximalist goals. We do not have the luxury of thinking about this as some abstract or theoretical question; our lives depend on these decisions.

And what would you say to people who deny the risk of renewed Russian aggression?

If they are so certain of this, then it will be no problem for them to swear publicly that they will personally come to fight against the Russian army in the event of a new invasion. Without that, their words are worth nothing.

You have painted a very bleak picture. Is there hope for something better?

Even under the best possible scenarios, Ukraine’s future looks rather bleak. Whatever the projects of postwar reconstruction may be, the country will never fully recover from the losses this war has inflicted on us. Many of the social and political processes set in motion by the war will hinder development.

Ultimately, this concerns not only Ukraine. Even if Russia wins an unequivocal victory, it will not be able to regain the international influence it once had. Regardless of how much more territory the Russian army manages to occupy, the consequences of the war for the Russian economy and for society as a whole will be very severe. Russia has paid for Putin’s imperial ambitions with its own future.

As for hope, it is still tied to the fall of the Putin regime. Perhaps a ceasefire will push things in that direction. As I understand it, among Russian elites and in society as a whole there is a widespread view that the full-scale invasion was Putin’s mistake, but that since the war has already begun, it cannot be lost. After the war ends, the question “What did we pay such a high price for?” will arise even more sharply.

In your view, how great are the chances that the Putin regime will fall after the war?

In essence, the fall of the Putin regime is the only thing that can bring lasting peace. Until that moment, regardless of what terms Ukraine is forced to accept, any peace agreement will be merely a freezing of the conflict. Even if someone then delivers a speech in the spirit of “I have brought you peace,” Eastern Europe will still live in fear of renewed Russian aggression.

In the end, nothing is eternal, and this regime will in any case fall sooner or later. But it seems many Western authors and politicians who fear the accompanying destabilization of Russia do not understand that the later this happens, the more severe the consequences will be. I think this fear was one of the reasons for the excessive caution of the Biden administration, and that, in turn, led to the prolongation of the war and, accordingly, to thousands of deaths, destroyed cities, and generally far heavier socioeconomic consequences for Ukraine and Russia.

Do you think that in the first years of the war Ukraine had better chances of victory?

Undoubtedly, there were chances until the end of autumn 2023. Even the losses and defeats Russia had suffered by then led to Prigozhin’s rebellion. If the losses had been still greater, that could have destabilized the Putin regime much more seriously. Unfortunately, that did not happen. Partly because of mistakes by the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but to a much greater extent because of the excessive caution of the Biden administration and the EU. They delayed too long in supplying weapons: first they refused certain types of arms, and when they eventually agreed, it was already too late. After the war entered the phase of attrition, our chances sharply diminished.

One of the Kremlin’s demands is presidential elections in Ukraine. It seems the Ukrainian authorities have recently changed their position on this?

It is an interesting case: Putin is demanding elections in order to get rid of Zelensky, while Zelensky now wants to hold elections precisely in order to remain in power.

Does he have a chance of winning an election?

During the war his chances are certainly higher than they will be after it ends. Right now he has only one real competitor: Valerii Zaluzhnyi. The war restrains political battles; people self-censor. Although even now, from conversations with foreign journalists, I have formed the impression that when they speak with Ukrainians, journalists understand the fact of this self-censorship, but they do not realize how much criticism of the authorities there is in Ukrainian media and social networks. After the war, there will be far more of this criticism. Questions such as “Why did we suffer such great losses?” will arise sharply not only in Russia, but in Ukraine as well. The dam will burst.

I would like Zelensky simply to leave politics after the war. But if he is able to renew his mandate before it ends, he will probably refuse to do so. It is hard to predict what forms public discontent will then take.

In addition, all of this looks problematic not only from a political perspective, but also from the standpoint of law. Under the Constitution, elections during martial law are prohibited, as are amendments to the Constitution during this period. The bill on holding elections during martial law that parliament is now preparing may be found unconstitutional. Moreover, Zelensky wants to hold a referendum simultaneously with the elections, but that too is prohibited by law. The Central Election Commission has stated that it needs at least six months after the lifting of martial law merely to organize the electoral process. At the same time, the government seems to be planning to hold elections much more quickly. For now I do not understand exactly how they intend to implement this.

What does he need a referendum for?

To obtain approval of a peace agreement and thus share responsibility with society. A referendum would be necessary if Ukraine were forced to legally recognize the Russian annexations. But neither Ukrainian society nor the government agrees to that. There is no need for a referendum; it is rather yet another example of Zelensky’s unwillingness to make a difficult decision. There have been many similar situations during the war, and this has caused a series of problems. The government hoped that the war would soon end, and therefore postponed resolving difficult issues, postponing them until it became too late. Our military weakness now is connected primarily not with the cancellation of American aid, but with internal problems.

And what effect has Trump’s policy had on the course of the war?

I am not a military analyst. As a soldier, I know about the situation on my section of the front, but I may not understand more general matters. Overall, it seems to me that Trump’s policy had its greatest impact not on the front, but on Ukrainian cities in the rear. Our greatest military dependence on the United States concerns air defense: without Patriot systems, we cannot effectively protect rear cities from ballistic missiles. Trump’s policy is one of the reasons for the sharp increase in civilian casualties last year. The current dreadful situation in the energy sector is also connected with this.

As for the situation at the front, the effect was not so significant. Perhaps the greater impact came in 2024, when Republicans in Congress blocked the allocation of new military aid to Ukraine for half a year. As a result, our dependence on U.S. aid became much smaller, and Europe was able partially to compensate for its loss. HIMARS, for example, were very important in 2022, but they are no longer as important now. And as for Javelins, I do not even remember when I last heard them mentioned in the army. The battlefield as a whole has changed greatly over these years because of drones.

Let us move on to more civilian questions. What do you think Ukrainian politics will be like after the war?

First, for Ukrainian politics to exist, Ukraine itself must survive as such. Second, I think no one can answer this question now, because everything will depend very heavily on the outcome of the war and the terms of the peace agreement. But it is obvious that the political landscape will change radically.

The traditional Ukrainian oligarchs have lost a great deal because of the war. Besides economic losses, many of them are under political pressure: five of the ten richest Ukrainian oligarchs are under Zelensky’s sanctions. Ihor Kolomoisky, who helped Zelensky win in 2019, has been in pretrial detention since 2023. The influence of oligarch-controlled television has significantly diminished. At the same time, over these years we have acquired a new military-industrial complex, and after the war new political entrepreneurs will probably emerge from it. In general, for now there are still too many unknowns.

And what about the Ukrainian far right?

Again, everything will depend on the results of the war. If the result is perceived in Ukraine as a defeat, the far right will be able to state confidently: “We would have handled it better.” And many people will believe them. Over these years they have acquired enough symbolic capital for that. If, however, the result of the war is perceived as a victory, even an incomplete one, it will be harder for them to convert their military successes into political capital.

In general, the influence of the far right will most likely grow compared with prewar times; this is happening almost everywhere in the world, but I would not be one hundred percent certain. After Maidan, too, it initially seemed that we were in for a rise of the radical right: Svoboda was one of the three main opposition parties and entered the new post-Maidan government, while Right Sector was the best-known radical organization on Maidan. Instead, after Maidan, Svoboda began to decline; Right Sector failed to build on its success, and the Azov movement needed years to build structures and attract young people. In 2019, for a while it seemed they had received a new chance, but instead the radical right encountered a new crisis.

There is also the “Trump factor”: some Ukrainian right radicals supported him until 2025, and now they are being criticized for it. This can be compared with Canada, where Trump’s pressure led to a fall in the conservatives’ ratings and a victory for the liberals. But how significant this influence will be in Ukraine is hard to say. In general, too much remains unknown.

And what about the Ukrainian left?

It is worth beginning with the fact that we are very weak. As in other post-socialist countries, the anti-Stalinist left in Ukraine was forced to start from zero. But while in Poland, Slovenia, Croatia, and other countries the new left began to win certain victories after 2014, in Ukraine the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas led to the split and decline of the left.

The 2022 invasion had a different effect: there was a revival, and in 2023 even the student trade union Direct Action was reborn. But our activity is complicated by martial law and by the fact that many experienced activists are serving in the army. Some have also been killed at the front: the anarchist artist Davyd Chychkan, the anthropologist and Commons author Yevhenii Osiievskyi, and others. In addition, the Russian anarchist Dima Petrov, who was our comrade and a Commons author, was killed fighting on Ukraine’s side.

As for the student trade union Direct Action, it is worth adding that their activity has now been complicated by opposition from youth right-radical organizations. If in the first years of the war the far right paid no attention to us, then from 2024 conflicts began again. However, the terms of confrontation have now changed. For example, in 2024 right radicals tried to disrupt the presentation of a student zine in Odesa, but anarchist veterans came to the students’ defense. Last year the leader of the Russian neo-Nazis in Ukraine, Denis Kapustin, staged a provocation at Davyd Chychkan’s funeral, but once again he was “put on the ground” by anarchist servicemen.

As for the future, again, everything will depend very strongly on the outcome of the war. This may sound counterintuitive to many, but if Ukraine loses the war, the far right will increase its influence, while we will most likely disappear as a collective subject. The next generation of leftists will be forced to start from zero. Again.

Among Western leftists one can still hear references to the post-CPSU “old left” parties, which, together with other pro-Russian parties, were banned in 2022. What do you usually answer when asked about them?

Usually I simply show the video of the racist advertisement by Nataliia Vitrenko, whose party was called the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine. Experience has shown that it is better to show it once than to spend a long time trying to explain everything in words.

Among European leftists there is now much discussion about increasing state defense spending and militarization. What do you think about this?

I am not an expert on European defense issues, and I have not had much time to examine exactly what defense expenditures in Europe are currently being spent on. We cooperate with leftists from the Nordic countries, and it seems to me they have fairly good ideas on this topic. For example, they proposed a Europe-wide embargo on arms sales anywhere except Ukraine; in my view, that was an excellent idea. In general, international security is a topic for a separate long conversation. But I would like to comment on one thing: on social media, some European leftists who oppose rearmament sometimes blame Ukraine for it. That is, in essence, blaming the victim. The cause of the new arms race is not Ukrainian resistance, but the Russian invasion. If Ukraine loses, militarization will only intensify.

Final question: what conclusion, in your view, should the international left draw from the first year of Trump’s presidency?

There may be many conclusions; that is a topic for a separate conversation. I will speak about what concerns me most. Over the past year, a reactionary president of the United States did what the “antiwar” left had called for. What did this lead to? To the intensification of aggression, an increase in civilian casualties and destruction. Things only got worse. In this situation, in my view, those who are “antiwar” ought to draw certain conclusions and revise their views. But I still do not see that they have done so.

The logic of part of the “antiwar” left looks like this: “We provoked this war, so let us now throw the victim of aggression under the bus.” In Trump’s version it is: “throw the victim under the bus and rob her.” Despite the humanist rhetoric, all the proposals in practice came down to leaving Ukraine defenseless in the face of imperialist aggression. Some, moreover, referred to the experience of the First World War, when the slogan of the antiwar left was “a democratic peace without annexations or indemnities.” I do not understand why it is still not obvious that this is the wrong approach. In the 1990s the United States forced Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons to Russia, making us vulnerable. The responsibility of the United States in such a situation is to help Ukraine, not to reward the aggressor.