‘Ukrainians feel ignored’

Journalist and correspondent María Senovilla spoke on the programme ‘De cara al mundo’ on Onda Madrid about Ukraine's reaction to the telephone conversation between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to end the war without first consulting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. She also considered the corruption present during the war and the measures taken. 

Donald Trump's latest moves have caused outrage, pessimism and some hope. However, most people want the war to end, but perhaps not at any price. What are people's feelings in Ukraine at the moment?  

These have been very intense days, watching Trump's every move. The fact that he called Putin first, that he staged that conversation in such good terms, here in Ukraine, has caused a bit of outrage. Because the reality is that Ukraine is the invaded country. Maybe he should have called the victims first and agreed with them from the outset, at the negotiating table, what was going to be done.  

Here in Ukraine, people get their news from Telegram. As well as using the app to send messages, there are news channels here, all the media have their own Telegram channel, and let's just say that it's the way people get their news, the newspaper that Ukrainians read here. And after Trump's call to Putin, the comments pouring in on Telegram were quick to arrive: indignation, despair, feelings of being disregarded, of being ignored. It was even said that the negotiations to end the war in Ukraine were going to take place without Ukraine at the negotiating table. And it has been a very tough few days.  

I tried to get a sense of different opinions, both from ordinary people and, above all, from the soldiers on the front line. Because, while all these political moves are taking place, while Trump picks up the phone, while other states feel ignored, there are still soldiers in the trenches 24 hours a day who are dying. 

So I was interested in talking to several of them at different points on the front line and you could sense a tremendous feeling of weariness. They said that in the end they didn't really care anymore, that they were waiting for orders, to find out if they had to stop firing, if they had to continue killing Russians or if they were all going to die tomorrow in the trenches. Some said that this war will not end because Putin is not going to settle for 18% of Ukraine and without being present in NATO, which is another thing that Trump has hinted at. The possibility of Ukraine joining NATO is unfeasible. People realise that there will be no security guarantees so that, after these three terrible years of war, and whatever time remains to us because the ceasefire will not be immediate, this will not happen again in the near future.

It remains to be seen if, as a result of the meeting they held on Friday 14th February in Munich, where it seems that other concepts have been put on the table, Putin has not been given that advantage as Trump apparently made him see in their telephone conversation. Now it remains to be seen if this will calm things down a bit.

Yesterday was a very tough day. The opinions I gathered were outrage and despair. The Ukrainians did not expect this move from Trump, who, in addition to managing the world geopolitical agenda, is also controlling the media agenda at will. Ukraine is in the news today because Trump picked up the phone. The Ukrainians feel ignored.

And with regard to Europe, what are the Ukrainians saying? Are they confident that we Europeans will not abandon them, that we will stand behind them? Because what Trump has done is to ignore, despise and once again snub the Europeans. He is imposing tariffs on us.

Exactly a year ago, on the eve of the second anniversary of the war, the then US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said that states that are not at the geopolitical table will be on the menu. A few months later, Josep Borrell endorsed that phrase, predicting what is happening with Europe. 

At the moment it is not at the negotiating table, at the table of those who are going to share out the cake. There is the United States, there is Russia, and in the background there will be China, but Europe is neither there nor expected, nor mentioned, and if they are not at the table, they are probably on the menu, and we will probably be the ‘paymasters’ of this whole tragedy. 

There is going to have to be a major reconstruction here, which Trump has already said will be Europe's responsibility, which is why Ukraine is in Europe, and a military contingent will have to be deployed here so that, when the ceasefire comes, a buffer zone can be created and the 1,200-kilometre front line can be monitored, because Ukraine is a very large country, and the front line runs through the whole of the east and part of the south. 

Thousands of soldiers will have to be deployed here, or even tens of thousands, which Trump has already said he will not provide. We Europeans are going to provide them, and we are also going to be forced to double, in some cases even more, the defence budget, which is lagging behind what has already been needed for years. We are going to be the ones who are going to pay the price while other states share the cake. 

And, meanwhile, Russia continues to bomb. Recently, Zelenski said that 133 drones have been launched by Russia, almost all of which have been neutralised, but one has hit one of the protected areas of the Zaporiyia nuclear power plant. We will see what damage that has caused, but the offensive in Chernobyl is still terrible and the bombings are daily, including civilian targets. 

It's true that 133 drones were launched, but that's nothing new. It's what's being done on a daily basis. Ukraine neutralised half of them. Where I am now, in Kramatorsk, at the rear of that Bajmut front, is that part of the Donbass that is still under Ukrainian control and is one of Putin's top targets. 

Before the ceasefire is reached, Putin wants to control the whole of Donbass and that includes the north of the province of Donetsk, where the cities of Kramatorsk, Konstantinovka, Sloviansk and Pokrovsk are located, which is about to fall. 

And here the bombing and the offensive have intensified in an unimaginable way and with new methods. We have been bombed since last Friday. After the programme ended, there was a big bombardment here and the Russians knocked out the whole electrical system, not only in Kramatorsk, but also in Druzhkivka and Sloviansk, which are the cities just before and just after. We had electricity for 24 hours, without heating, with temperatures of 14 below zero on the street, and, since that day, the bombardments have been daily. We are being bombed several times a day. 

On Sunday they launched an aerial bomb of half a tonne against Kramatorsk, against a private sector, these neighbourhoods of low houses, with their gates and small vegetable gardens, in other words, zero military targets. The damage they caused to residential buildings, shops, cars burning in the streets, where there was only one dead and many injured, was inconceivable. They repeated a similar attack, this time with a 250-kilo bomb, but the same thing happened, in a residential neighbourhood, at 12 noon the projectile fell, and there were also deaths and injuries. 

In the last few hours, the drones flying over Kramatorsk could be heard clearly, some of those 133 drones also came to this part of the Donbass, and what I get the feeling is that, with this tacit support from Trump to Putin, what he is going to feel is more impunity when it comes to massacring civilian targets, and in the case of northern Donetsk, of this little piece that remains of the Donbass to complete the Russian takeover. For example, the city of Konstantinovka, which is the one before Kramatorsk, has gone from 70,000 people to 12,000. 

I can tell you that I was walking through the streets to take photos and to collect testimonies, and they are only allowed to leave their homes for four hours a day, between 11 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon, because there are on average 15-20 bombings, so they are trying to protect the population. 

Well, in the hours that I was able to try to get testimonies, I saw up to three families who were closing up their business or their house, packing everything into vans and evacuating, because the city reminded me of Pokrovsk three or four months ago, which is at the limit, already destroyed, bombed, on the verge of collapse, and Konstantinovka is going the same way. 

And I've mentioned two, but there are more cities in the rear that Russia is softening up. Just think about that horrible military concept of reducing a city to rubble by bombing it and then sending in the infantry. It's doing it to several cities at the same time on the front line, and it's not going to stop. 

One of the points that Trump and Putin have addressed, as is being leaked, apart from the ceasefire, non-entry into NATO, the maintenance of Crimea, the Donbass, and so on, is the holding of elections as soon as possible in Ukraine. They are playing on the fact that President Zelensky's popularity may not be at its best, but here everyone is moving their pieces because Zelensky has sanctioned former President Poroshenko. Does corruption come into play here or what has happened? 

Yes, corruption has been an issue since the start of the war. If you ask Ukrainians, they admit it and tell you that it is a legacy of the Soviet Union, that they have not managed to shake it off since 1991, when they became independent. Zelensky has taken steps, above all, to alleviate that corruption within the army, within the military sphere, because in the end it has a direct influence on the course of the war and Zelensky couldn't allow that to happen. 

Even so, this is something that they have internalised here and that young people find very difficult, they are disenchanted that strong enough measures are not being taken. And one of those measures has been that Zelensky has sanctioned the former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, who was in power between 2014 and 2019 and who is the current leader of the opposition party. He is not the only one to have been sanctioned, along with his name are those of several oligarchs and other politicians accused of having profited from selling Ukraine's interests during the war. 

This is a very serious accusation because it is framed within issues of national security. Of course, their lawyers are appealing the sanctions, but for the moment their assets have been frozen and their commercial activity has been paralysed. Zelensky issued a very harsh statement on the matter, in which he asserted that the millions they all made from selling to Ukraine — he used this term — should be used to protect Ukrainians. The current president also said that he did not understand how the financial control mechanisms had not detected these movements before and that it would be up to the courts to have the final say.

But the truth is that, on the ground, this move has been interpreted in electoral terms. Indeed, presidential elections should have been held here in Ukraine in 2024. They couldn't be held because we're in the middle of a war, because there's martial law, because 18% of Ukraine is under Russian occupation and the millions of Ukrainians who live there would not have been able to exercise their right to vote. But if the war is brought to an end this year, elections will probably be held afterwards and some have accused Zelensky of getting rid of his main political rival now with this move.