As Ukraine Marks Christmas, Exhausted Soldiers Wonder If Trump Can End the War

The Washington Post

12:36 JST, December 27, 2024

DNIPROPETROVSK REGION, Ukraine – Christmas on Ukraine’s front line started, fittingly, in an old barn filled with hay. Soldiers filed in as Lt. Mykola Bagirov, the brigade’s chaplain, began chanting prayers in a setting straight out of a Nativity scene – never mind the M113 armored personnel carriers parked beside him.

Bagirov spent the rest of the day dressed in a colorful jacket and carrying a painted spinning star while merrily singing traditional Ukrainian carols and banging a tambourine against his thigh.

His audience, though thankful for the attempt at holiday cheer, was noticeably less enthused.

“There’s no good mood,” said Kyrylo, a deputy battalion commander with Ukraine’s 33rd Mechanized Brigade. The Post is identifying the 37-year-old and other Ukrainian service members by just his first name, in keeping with military protocol.

“No one feels like the end is near,” Kyrylo said. “The morale keeps sinking lower and lower, getting worse and worse.”

This holiday season marks Ukraine’s third straight since Russia’s invasion, and President-elect Donald Trump’s promise of negotiations to end the war has many questioning if there will be a fourth. Trump is already pressuring European nations to increase aid to Ukraine while signaling that security assistance from the United States – Ukraine’s biggest backer – will decline.

But he has not disclosed details of how he plans to force Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, and Ukrainian and Russian delegations have not met since the first months of the war in 2022. In past years, officials in Kyiv and soldiers on the battlefield expressed commitment to fighting until the occupying Russian forces were defeated and pushed off Ukrainian land.

Asked for their thoughts about a potential ceasefire in 2025, soldiers in Ukraine’s 33rd brigade said they’d welcome a reprieve but were skeptical one was coming soon. Many expressed doubt that Putin would settle for peace while Russian forces have continued to make gains and maintain the offensive initiative. A peace deal would likely also see Moscow keep the territory it has captured – more than 20 percent of Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has said recently active hostilities could end next year and Kyiv would then work to diplomatically return its occupied lands at a later date. Some soldiers on Wednesday said they feared the United States would discontinue its critical weapons support if Kyiv didn’t agree to territorial concessions in the interim. Others acknowledged that they’re ceding land now even as they continue to fight.

“Where we used to talk about victory before, now it’s unclear,” Kyrylo said.

He then ushered chaplain Bagirov into a home where three soldiers had the day off from combat tasks because they’d attended a funeral for their comrade a day earlier. In the entranceway, a portrait of 27-year-old Vitaliy in his camouflage uniform was propped up on a table. He was killed in a Russian drone strike over the weekend.

“I’m worried we will just be abandoned,” said Oleksandr, 26. “Those are the thoughts that creep in – that the support and deliveries from our allies, the ammunition, will just stop. If we don’t have that, we won’t have anything to shoot with.”

But most Ukrainian military personnel acknowledge that soldier shortages are now just as critical as the weapons deficits. Some specialized jobs in the 33rd – such as a driver for armored personnel carriers – were down to just one person in a battalion, soldiers said, complicating logistics to transport troops safely back and forth from trench positions.

“Do we even have infantry?” said 37-year-old Denys, a drone operator. “It’s down to a couple of guys and they’re over 50 years old. What are they going to do?”

Felix, 39, who is responsible for providing logistical and moral support for his unit, said fighters are simply exhausted. He hoped Trump’s January inauguration would mark a turning point in the war toward negotiations because it could provide soldiers with a much-needed break.

“It can’t go on like this,” Felix said. “We’re withdrawing. And they’re pushing further and further. What kind of victory will happen? … If our officials can’t put an end to it, maybe Mr. Trump can.”

Ukraine’s 33rd brigade was initially created out of optimism – to take back territory. Ahead of the highly anticipated counteroffensive on the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region last year, the brigade was one of several new units formed. Its members were trained by allies abroad to operate donated Western equipment, such as the German Leopard tanks. But after the counteroffensive stalled due to a stout Russian defense, the brigade shifted to defensive duties.

Now it’s one of the units holding the hottest part of the front line, around the town of Kurakhove in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. Russian forces have made rapid gains here, intensifying their attacks in what analysts and Western officials have said is likely a bid to occupy as much land as they can before Trump’s inauguration and the possible start of ceasefire negotiations.

Celebrating Christmas on Dec. 25 is a new tradition for most Ukrainians, who until last year officially recognized the holiday on Jan. 7, in the tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The switch to Dec. 25 was another way to move closer to Western ways. Across Ukraine, the day started with a massive Russian missile barrage targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, causing rolling blackouts throughout the country.

“Christmas should be a time of peace, yet Ukraine was brutally attacked on Christmas Day,” Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for the war in Ukraine, wrote in a post on X. “ … The world is closely watching actions on both sides. The U.S. is more resolved than ever to bring peace to the region.”

As chaplain Bagirov visited one group of soldiers after another, lifting his robe as his boots sank into the heavy mud, he acknowledged the troops’ mood was grim. “What mood?” he joked. His prediction for the next year was a ceasefire by Easter, followed by Christmas caroling with families away from the front line.

“We can’t live without hope,” he said.

Inside one of the brigade’s medical stations for soldiers with minor injuries, 48-year-old Oleh was spending Christmas recovering from shrapnel wounds in his spine. “This won’t end soon,” he said.

The Russians “won’t stop this,” he said. “They don’t want to live peacefully.”