Ukrainian troops have little hope for peace as Trump's deadline for Russia arrives

Ukrainian soldiers are expressing little hope for a diplomatic solution to the war with Russia

DNIPROPETROVSK, Ukraine -- Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield expressed little hope for a diplomatic solution to the war with Russia, as U.S. President Donald Trump’s Friday deadline for the Kremlin to stop the killing arrived and he eyed a possible summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the conflict.

Trump’s efforts to pressure Putin have so far delivered no progress. Russia’s 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.

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.

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.

In the Pokrovsk area, a commander said he believes Moscow isn’t interested in peace.

“It is impossible to negotiate with them. The only option is to defeat them,” Buda, the Spartan Brigade commander, told The Associated Press. He used only his call sign, in keeping with the rules of the Ukrainian military.

“I 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,” he said.

In the southern Zaporizhzhia region, a howitzer commander using the call sign Warsaw, said troops are determined to thwart Russia’s invasion.

“We are on our land, we have no way out,” he said. “So we stand our ground, we have no choice.”

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.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said in an assessment Thursday that “Putin remains uninterested in ending his war and is attempting to extract bilateral concessions from the United States without meaningfully engaging in a peace process.”

“Putin continues to believe that time is on Russia’s side and that Russia can outlast Ukraine and the West,” it said.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said Friday that Europe should take the lead in efforts to end the conflict.

Orbán said the leaders of Germany and France should go to Moscow “to negotiate on behalf of Europe.” Otherwise, “we will be sidelined in managing the security issues of our own continent,” Orbán told Hungary’s state broadcaster.

Orbán, who is a harsh critic of the European Union to which his country belongs, said Europe’s concerns that a Trump-Putin summit might not address the continent’s interests meant it should seize the diplomatic initiative.

“This war cannot be ended on the front line, no solution can be concluded on the battlefield,” he said. “This war must be ended by diplomats, politicians, leaders at the negotiating table.”

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Samya Kullab in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine