'What about us?' Emotions run high in frontline city over risk of deal ceding land to Moscow

Zaporizhzhia, an industrial hub in south-east Ukraine, is as good a place as any to grasp the stakes of freezing Russia's invasion of Ukraine along its current frontlines, or of implementing a "land swap for peace" deal as envisioned by Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.

- Shaun Walker

Since Russian troops began rolling into Ukraine in February 2022, Zaporizhzhia, with its broad avenues and Stalin-era apartment blocks, has been a 30-minute drive from the frontline. It has been under near-constant attack from missiles and drones. On Sunday, a Russian guided air bomb hit a bus station, wounding 24 people - just another day of suffering in a city that has known many of them.

Plenty of people here and in other Ukrainian towns close to the frontline are so weary of the sleepless nights and disrupted lives of the past years that they are ready for Kyiv to sign a peace deal, even an imperfect one, if it means the attacks will stop.

But many others think very differently because they know too well what it means to give Russia control over Ukrainian territory: arrests, disappearances and the erasure of anything Ukrainian. As Moscow moves swiftly to Russify occupied territory, expelling or arresting active members of society and introducing new media outlets and school curriculums heavy on propaganda, a few years of Russian control may make it almost impossible for Ukraine to regain these territories at a later date.

About one in five people in Zaporizhzhia are internally displaced, from even closer to the frontline or from occupied parts of Ukraine. They are living in the city until they can go home.