Could a ceasefire deal be a disaster for Ukraine in disguise? That is the urgent question echoing in Ukrainian frontline bunkers and in the ruins of besieged towns, where ubiquitous exhaustion begs for peace, but where a costly learned distrust of Russia rules. Anxiety is manifold. Would a ceasefire hold? Would Russia just use it to re-equip and attack again? Would Moscow even want it, given it is fast winning ground? Would Ukraine’s allies give it the same military support, if they felt diplomacy had led the guns to fall silent? The screens before Volodymyr Sablyn, a battalion commander in the 66th mechanized brigade, tell a gut-wrenching story of Ukraine’s modern, yet archaically brutal battlefield. Tiny, cheap drones fly over the pockmarked and battered trenches around Lyman – a mix of frozen sludge, trash, bunkers and “beetroot,” the ugly term for human remains that cannot be retrieved. Volodymyr Sablyn speaks…
