At the centre of these revelations is the long-running presence of the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in Budapest. For several years, the event, widely associated with the “America First” movement and prominent figures aligned with U.S. President Donald Trump, was hosted in Hungary with significant logistical and financial backing from institutions connected to Orban’s government. Hungarian media analysts and civil society figures now say that public funds were used to cover licensing, travel and accommodation costs for international speakers, raising questions about the use of taxpayer money for what critics describe as politically aligned messaging.

Kata Urban of Mertek Media Monitor, a Hungarian media watchdog, described the conference as functioning less as a neutral forum and more as a curated platform reinforcing government narratives. Independent and international journalists, she said, often faced restricted access, while state-aligned media amplified the event’s messaging domestically.

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I was joined by , founder of , and , a Kyiv-based journalist with whom I have reported on Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine since 2022. Olena has also documented national security issues and Russian atrocities on the ground.

Peter argued that Hungary’s shift was strategic, though not a total ideological rupture. In his view, Péter Magyar is moving the country back towards the EU and NATO and trying to repair the damage of Orban’s 16 years in power. But he stressed that democratic recovery would be slow.

“The real story begins now,” he said, referring to the challenge of rebuilding media freedom, institutional trust and democratic life inside Hungary.

When I asked what the change in leadership meant for Ukraine, Olena said Ukrainians had grown fatigued by Orban’s repeated attempts to obstruct support for Kyiv. She described his rhetoric as damaging and said many Ukrainians saw his conduct as directed more at foreign audiences than at any practical concern for peace. At the same time, she was careful not to overstate expectations about Magyar. Because he emerged from Fidesz, she said, he remained a figure to watch closely rather than trust automatically.

A central part of our discussion focused on Hungary’s dependence on Russian energy. Peter said this relationship had become deeply embedded in the state and economy, including through oil, gas and the Paks nuclear project. He noted that diversification would be politically and economically difficult and that Magyar himself had acknowledged Hungary would continue buying Russian energy for the foreseeable future.

“It’s going to be hard and it’s going to take a long time,” Peter said.

I also asked about recent revelations concerning contacts between Hungary’s former foreign minister and Sergei Lavrov, and what that meant for trust inside the EU and NATO. Peter said trust could not be restored quickly and would have to be earned through reform, transparency and anti-corruption measures. He argued that only sustained democratic change inside Hungary would persuade partners that Budapest had become reliable again.

On Ukraine’s EU path, Peter said Magyar appeared less confrontational than Orbán, but still cautious. He suggested Hungary was unlikely to continue acting as a spoiler in the same way, though it would not necessarily embrace fast-track accession for Ukraine. Olena, for her part, said Ukraine was working to meet the demands of European integration during wartime, but added that the scale and complexity of the country made accession a formidable task.

In the final part of the discussion, I turned to the Western Balkans and the overlap between Hungarian, Serbian and Russian influence. Peter described what he saw as a pattern of coordination among regional strongmen aligned with Moscow. Olena responded more broadly, saying that in moments of real danger, only a country’s own forces can truly defend its sovereignty.

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At the centre of this convergence stood Donald Trump, whose sustained endorsement of Orban over several years had elevated the Hungarian leader into a symbolic figure within the global right. Trump’s praise was neither incidental nor diplomatic. He described Orban as “a fantastic man” and a defender of national sovereignty, language that mirrored his own political narrative in the United States. In doing so, he transformed Hungary from a peripheral European state into a reference point for a broader ideological struggle against what he characterised as liberal institutionalism.

This alignment reached its most visible expression in the presence of J.D. Vance in Budapest just days before the vote1. Vance’s appearance was not framed as a neutral diplomatic engagement but as a deliberate act of political support. Standing alongside Orban, he praised his leadership as a model for Europe, describing him as “wise and smart” and suggesting that Hungary under his rule offered an alternative to the prevailing political order on the continent.

The implications of this intervention were immediate and profound. In practical terms, it represented a departure from established norms governing relations between democratic allies. The United States has historically exercised caution in engaging with the internal electoral processes of European partners, recognising that overt involvement risks undermining both sovereignty and legitimacy. In this instance, that restraint was abandoned.

The result was a moment of stark contradiction. American officials, who have frequently criticised external interference in democratic systems, found themselves participating in precisely such an act. The language used to justify this involvement rested on the familiar themes of sovereignty and cultural identity, yet the act itself introduced an external influence into a national electoral process at a critical juncture.

For Orban, the endorsement carried both symbolic and strategic value. It reinforced his positioning within an international network of right wing leaders and movements, providing validation at a moment when domestic support appeared to be eroding. It also sought to mobilise his base by framing the election as part of a broader ideological contest, one that extended beyond Hungary’s borders.

Yet the effect of this intervention was more complex than its architects may have anticipated. Rather than consolidating support, it exposed the extent to which Orban’s project had become intertwined with external political currents that did not necessarily resonate with the Hungarian electorate. Polling data had already indicated that Trump was a polarising figure within Hungary, with public opinion divided on his role as a global leader. The visible association with American political figures may therefore have reinforced concerns among voters about the direction of the country.

More fundamentally, the intervention highlighted a deeper structural issue within Orban’s model of governance. Over time, his administration had cultivated a narrative of national sovereignty, presenting itself as a bulwark against external influence. Yet the reliance on endorsement from foreign political actors revealed a tension within that narrative. Sovereignty, in this context, appeared conditional, invoked selectively when aligned with domestic priorities but set aside when external support was deemed advantageous.

This contradiction did not go unnoticed. For many voters, the presence of American political figures in the closing days of the campaign underscored the extent to which Hungary’s political trajectory had become entangled in a wider ideological movement. The election, therefore, was not only a referendum on domestic governance but on the country’s place within a shifting global order.

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Hungary’s political order shifted decisively on Sunday evening as Prime Minister Viktor Orban conceded defeat in a general election that is set to redraw not only the country’s internal governance but the geopolitical balance across Europe. With nearly half of the votes counted, projections from the national election office indicated that the opposition Tisza party would secure 135 of 199 seats, a two thirds majority that effectively dismantles the parliamentary dominance long held by Orban’s Fidesz.

“The situation is understandable and clear,” Orban said from his campaign headquarters, acknowledging that the mandate to govern had shifted.

His concession, delivered without contest, marked the end of a political era that began in 2010 and evolved into one of the most centralised governing systems within the European Union.

The scale of the defeat is as significant as its symbolism. For more than a decade, Orban constructed a political model often described as illiberal democracy, one in which electoral processes persisted but institutional checks were steadily weakened. Control over media landscapes, pressure on judicial independence, and the consolidation of executive authority reshaped Hungary into a state where political power increasingly revolved around a single leadership structure.

The rise of Peter Magyar, now poised to become Prime Minister, represents a direct rupture with that system. A former insider within Orban’s political orbit, Magyar broke away in 2024 and rapidly assembled a coalition that transcended traditional ideological divisions. His campaign drew support from both left leaning voters and conservative constituencies disillusioned with the direction of the government, particularly over corruption and economic stagnation.

The election result reflects a convergence of domestic pressures that had been building over several years. Hungary’s economic performance, marked by inflationary pressures and uneven growth, contributed to public dissatisfaction. At the same time, allegations of entrenched corruption and the concentration of wealth within politically connected networks eroded confidence in the governing structure. These factors, combined with a growing sense of political fatigue, created the conditions for a unified opposition movement capable of challenging Fidesz on a national scale.

Yet the implications of this election extend well beyond Hungary’s borders. Under Orban’s leadership, the country occupied a distinctive and often contentious position within the European Union. While formally committed to the bloc, Hungary repeatedly used its veto powers to delay or obstruct collective decisions, particularly those related to sanctions against Russia and support for Ukraine.

This pattern of behaviour positioned Hungary as a critical point of friction within the Union’s decision making framework. The requirement for unanimity on key foreign policy issues meant that a single member state could significantly influence the pace and direction of European action. In practice, this allowed Budapest to act as a brake on initiatives that required collective agreement, complicating efforts to present a unified European response to external challenges.

The election of a new government under Magyar introduces the possibility of a fundamental shift in this dynamic. During the campaign, he signalled an intention to pursue a more constructive relationship with European institutions and to re align Hungary with the broader strategic direction of the Union. If implemented, such a shift would reduce internal resistance within the EU and enhance its ability to act cohesively on matters of foreign policy and security.

At the centre of this recalibration lies the question of Russia.

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It is, at first glance, an unremarkable exchange. Two foreign ministers speaking in the practised cadence of men accustomed to quiet arrangements. One asks for a document. The other obliges.

“I send it to you, it’s not a problem.”

There is no hesitation in the line, no bureaucratic friction, no suggestion that what is being discussed belongs to a multilateral process or a guarded institutional framework. Instead, there is a familiarity that carries its own meaning, an assumption that access is not to be negotiated but expected. The document in question concerns European Union deliberations on Ukraine’s accession, a matter that, in principle, should be confined within the internal mechanisms of a political bloc currently financing, arming, and diplomatically sustaining Kyiv’s defence against Russian aggression.

Yet here, in this intercepted conversation, that boundary appears to dissolve.

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The arrival of J.D. Vance in Budapest, a city whose stones still bear the scars of twentieth-century autocracy, was a spectacle of such profound ideological incoherence that it demanded a suspension of disbelief. Here was the American Vice President1, a man who rose to power on the back of a “New Right” philosophy that sanctifies the local, the national, and the sovereign, performing a blatant act of political tourism designed to meddle in the domestic affairs of a European state2. By standing on a Hungarian stage five days before a pivotal election to endorse Viktor Orban, Vance did not merely participate in a campaign rally, he executed a controlled demolition of the very principles of non-interference he purports to hold sacred.

The hypocrisy was as thick as the humidity of the Danube. In a display of rhetorical acrobatics that would be imp…

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This is the point too many Europeans still resist. They continue to view American political breakdown as a spectacle to be observed, deplored or mocked from a safe distance. That is a luxury Britain does not possess. The United Kingdom’s security architecture, like that of most of Europe, still rests in no small part on the assumption that the United State…

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Prime Minister Donald Tusk told parliament it was “the closest we have been to open conflict since World War Two,” while adding he had “no reason to believe we’re on the brink of war.”

A blackened patch in a southeastern field marked where another device had fallen, the char an inkblot of uncertainty.

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The meeting, described by multiple sources familiar with the discussion, reportedly descended several times into shouting, with Trump dismissing Ukrainian battlefield maps, demanding that Kyiv surrender the entire Donbas region, and repeatedly echoing arguments made by the Russian president during a call the day before1.

Despite ultimately agreeing to a proposal to freeze the current front lines, the tone and substance of the exchange appeared to underscore the volatility of Trump’s position on the war and raised new concerns among European allies about Washington’s direction.

Neither the White House nor the Ukrainian president’s office has issued an official readout, and both declined immediate comment.

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We sipped tea as dusk began to pull its grey curtain across the city, and our conversation unfolded not like an interview, but as an unburdening. He spoke plainly, sometimes cautiously, but always with the clarity of someone who has lived too long with his thoughts and too little with hope.

His voice carried the weight of years spent observing Ukraine from within and afar, a man educated in English translation, currently studying journalism, and politically awakened during the Orange Revolution of 2004. A life spent tracking the pulse of his nation from Viktor Yushchenko’s halting reforms to Zelensky’s embattled presidency. And now, like so many U…

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In October of that year, I published two detailed reportages1 that traced his transformation from archaeologist to artillery commander. Lang was no career soldier. He had once sifted through the earth in search of ancient stories. Now he fights to protect the fragile future of the country he once studied through its past. It was in those two stories, one told on the banks of the Siverskyi Donets River, the other in a worn-down café near the threatened city of Sumy that I began to see how the war was changing not just Ukraine’s geography, but its soul.

Now, in June 2025, as Russian forces push again with cold, mechanical precision, I returned to Ukraine to pick up the thread and found myself, once more, back with Lang.

Our conversation unfolded in a small cafe in Kyiv, joined by my Ukrainian colleague, journalist Olena Solodovnikova, who had helped facilitate the meeting. The mood was practical, stripped of preamble. These are not times for nostalgia.

“We had a plan to meet you in Sumy,” Lang said in deliberate English, so all could follow, “but things changed.”

Sumy had changed. The war had changed. Lang had changed.

He now carries the rank of Major, a promotion not born of ceremony but attrition. “In peacetime, it takes years,” he remarked. “Now, it’s only a matter of who survives.”

The Russian military, he explained, had returned to the north with a familiar and brutal patience. “They don’t rush anymore,” Lang said. “They’re taking two villages a day. Not by storm, by pressure. They want to surround Sumy, not destroy it.”

Lang’s brigade had only recently relocated from Sumy to Pokrovsk, part of a broader reorganisation of Ukrainian forces trying to anticipate Russia’s grinding momentum. “From our brigade, only some remnants remain in Sumy,” he told us. “But my friends in neighbouring units, they’ll help you organise everything.”

When I asked if I could embed with his unit once again, document their daily lives, their exhaustion, their resilience, he agreed without hesitation. “You’ve followed us for some time,” he said. “It matters. Come with us. We’ll make it work.”

In Ukraine, the line between access and bureaucracy is always thin. Lang understood this better than most. “Officially, yes, you need a press officer,” he said. “But unofficially, if you're with the commander, it’s safer. Less risk. Less paperwork to get you stuck.”

What followed was a detailed exchange about logistics: movements, dates, safe corridors, contacts, and shifting frontlines. Olena and I planned to travel to Sumy later this month, and Lang would meet us there or perhaps bring us into Pokrovsk beforehand, depending on the military situation. Flexibility, in war, is the only fixed condition.

But the war we spoke of was no longer fought with simple tools or clear boundaries. “We’re not just fighting soldiers anymore,” Lang said, his voice low, “we’re fighting drones. Kamikaze. FPVs. They don’t sleep. They don’t feel.”

The front, he explained, is now a 20-kilometre-wide “kill zone,” where movement, even in a civilian vehicle can draw sudden, lethal attention. “To survive, you must drive at least 150 kilometres per hour,” he said. “And even then, you’re not safe.”

His men no longer wear uniforms in rear areas. They travel unmarked. “We use civilian clothes, unmarked vehicles. The moment a drone sees military, it marks you.”

Lang still bears the cost of these changes. When I asked about his soldiers from the early days, he paused. “You remember Zakhar? From the Kharkiv region?” I nodded.

“He was killed. February 27. FPV drone. They were evacuating wounded. A direct hit.”

His voice, always measured, grew even quieter. “It’s war,” he said. But not the kind of war most outside observers understand.

In 2024, when we last spoke in Sumy, Lang had begun to show signs of psychological fatigue, the kind that weighs down even the most hardened soldier. His unit, like many others, had been fighting for so long that the war had begun to blur the difference between survival and purpose.

“They’ve stopped thinking of the enemy as human,” he told me last year. “Now it’s all drones and artillery. There’s no face anymore.”

That dehumanisation has only deepened. Lang now speaks of combat in metrics: drone speeds, strike zones, radar shadows, psychological thresholds. The battlefield has become a calculation, not a confrontation.

Still, in the midst of all this, he remains committed to telling the story, not for glory, but for documentation, for memory. “You can come,” he said. “Stay a week. A month. As long as it takes. If we go to Sumy after Pokrovsk, we’ll bring you.”

There is no safety now, not in Kyiv, not in the West, not even in strategy. “Even western Ukraine is under threat,” he said. “There are no safe places. Drones don’t care where you are.”

He told me about his children, both in Kyiv. One of his ex-wives had gone to Germany during the first waves of the full-scale invasion in 2022, but the children remained. “I visit when I can,” he said. “But there are missile attacks even here. Every few days. Five hours of bombing just this week.”

As we spoke, it became clear: Lang’s war is no longer one of movement, but one of permanence. He is not just holding the line, he is the line, and the toll it takes on him is both visible and hidden.

In the coming days, I will join his unit, follow their routines, listen to their exhaustion, and record their defiance. Together with Olena, I will document how soldiers survive this new form of warfare, and what they risk losing, not just in body, but in mind.

Major Lang embodies something essential about this war: that it is not merely being fought for territory, but for identity, for memory, and for the right to remain human in a conflict increasingly governed by the mechanical and the cruel.

He is no longer the captain I once photographed in Kharkiv’s battered forests. But he is still, resolutely, the same man.

“We’ll figure it out,” he said at the end of our conversation. “Just stay close. And don’t bring too much luggage.”

Somewhere ahead lies Sumy, and behind it, the uncertain fate of a nation fighting not just to hold the line, but to define what will remain once the drones have passed and the dust has settled.

And so, as we prepare to move eastward, toward Pokrovsk, toward Sumy, toward whatever remains of the front, I cannot help but feel that what I am documenting is not merely a war, but a slow, relentless erosion of the human soul. In the eyes of Major Lang, hollowed now by grief, courage, and unrelenting duty, I see the quiet extinction of a gentler past. This is a man who once exhumed the bones of ancient civilisations with reverence; now he buries his comrades in unmarked fields beneath skies that hum with death. Around him, boys grow old before they become men, carrying rocket launchers heavier than their dreams, standing guard over a future they no longer dare to imagine. And yet, they endure. In tattered boots, with trembling hands and eyes dulled by fatigue, they hold the line not for glory or flags, but for each other and for the stubborn, flickering belief that even now, in the howling machinery of modern war, something human is still worth saving.

Zelensky did not merely ignore Kosovo, he snubbed it. At the personal request of Aleksandar Vucic, the Serbian President and Putin’s Balkan vassal, Kosovo’s representatives were denied entry to a summit that billed itself as a meeting of equals united in defence of territorial integrity. The insult is staggering. It was as if a man with his house on …

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Vucic’s presence in Ukraine2 is not a gesture of solidarity, but a masterclass in manipulation3. His declarations of support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are not only hollow, they are dangerously misleading4. Serbia has consistently played both sides: publicly affirming respect for international norms while privately and operationally undermining them. The Balkan strongman’s rhetoric must be scrutinised against his decade-long record of duplicity, Kremlin alignment, and systematic destabilisation across the Balkans5.

To understand the threat Vucic poses, not only to Kosovo but to Ukraine and Europe at large, one must trace the arc of his political career and Serbia’s foreign policy since the dissolution of Yugoslavia6. As Slobodan Milosevic’s Minister of Information during the 1990s, Vucic was not merely complicit in the propaganda apparatus that justified war crimes in Bosnia and Kosovo, he was one of its architects. When Serbia's genocidal campaigns failed in Croatia, failed in Bosnia, and ultimately failed in Kosovo, it was NATO’s 1999 intervention that stopped Milosevic’s brutality. NATO’s actions came only after Serbia’s forces engaged in mass ethnic cleansing, with Kosovo becoming the final chapter in Milosevic’s attempt to preserve control through bloodshed.

Vucic, who stood beside Milosevic then, now attempts to rewrite that history, via its proxies casting Serbia as a victim7 of Western aggression. His statements draw false moral equivalence between NATO’s intervention in Kosovo and Russia’s criminal war in Ukraine. In doing so, Vucic does not support Ukraine’s territorial integrity; he exploits it as a rhetorical tool to discredit the NATO-led defence of Kosovo’s Albanians.

His agenda is clear: normalise Serbia’s historical crimes by accusing the international community of hypocrisy, muddying the very principles that justify Ukraine’s defence against Russian invasion.

Yet the duplicity runs deeper. In September 2022, barely nine months after the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Serbia signed a foreign policy alignment agreement with Moscow8. This move, executed in defiance of Europe’s democratic consensus, placed Serbia firmly within Russia’s geopolitical orbit. Vucic has since presided over an intensified alignment with the Kremlin, allowing Russian intelligence infrastructure to flourish on Serbian soil, including the so-called Russian Humanitarian Centre in Nis, a suspected hub for GRU and FSB operations in Europe.

Under Vucic’s leadership, Serbia has also welcomed Iranian and Chinese weapons, hosted a PMC Wagner recruitment centre in Belgrade, and permitted its territory to become a gateway for Russian oligarchs seeking to evade Western sanctions. While these developments unravel the myth of Serbia’s neutrality, the West has continued to court Belgrade with funds, arms deals, and political legitimacy. Vucic has played the West’s desire for regional stability against itself, extracting concessions while deepening his country’s authoritarian alliances.

This is the man now welcomed on Ukrainian soil.

Ukraine must ask itself: what does Serbia gain from this visit? The answer is simple, Vucic seeks to rebrand himself before an international audience that increasingly recognises the Kremlin’s malign influence in Europe. By posturing as a friend of Ukraine, he attempts to insulate himself from scrutiny over Serbia’s obstruction of Kosovo’s sovereignty, its sabotage of regional stability, and its complicity in Russia’s European strategy9.

The pattern is familiar. Serbia routinely employs the language of peace and cooperation to mask its strategic manoeuvres. In the case of the Iber-Lepenc canal attack in November 202410, a clear act of infrastructure sabotage against Kosovo. Belgrade condemned the violence while simultaneously blaming the victims, insinuating that Kosovo staged the attack itself. This tactic, borrowed directly from the Kremlin’s psychological warfare playbook, is one of denial, deflection, and deception11. It is what former KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov described as "ideological subversion": disorienting your enemy until they no longer know truth from fiction.

Vucic’s participation in the Ukraine-Southeast Europe Summit fits neatly within this disinformation doctrine. His aim is not to support Ukraine, but to delegitimise the moral basis for its defence. By aligning himself with Kyiv’s cause, Vucic hopes to invert the narrative: to assert that if Ukraine deserves sovereignty, then Serbia deserves to “reclaim” Kosovo12, a country whose independence was born of NATO’s intervention and the failure of Serbia to govern without resorting to genocide.

But the facts are stubborn: Kosovo declared independence in 2008 after nearly a decade of United Nations administration and the brutal suppression of its population by Belgrade. Serbia’s attempts to retain control, first through military force, then through political subversion, failed, and its latest effort to redraw Balkan borders by stealth has been increasingly reliant on Russian coordination and support.

Today, Belgrade’s covert operations in northern Kosovo bear a striking resemblance to Russia’s hybrid tactics in Ukraine: the use of unmarked militias, disinformation campaigns, and infrastructure attacks intended to sow chaos and erode governance. Intelligence links have confirmed the use of weapons and training methods modelled on Russian proxy warfare, making Serbia not just a local problem, but an operational threat to European security.

Now, with Serbia entering Ukraine’s diplomatic stage, the Kremlin gains a new channel through which to project influence. Ukraine must not mistake this as an opening for dialogue or normalisation. Rather, it must recognise that inviting Vucic is tantamount to inviting Putin’s emissary in the Balkans. The risk is not merely symbolic. It legitimises an actor who remains fundamentally opposed to the democratic order Ukraine seeks to join.

Ukrainians must also remember: while they die defending their sovereignty, Vucic shields those who seek to dismantle it elsewhere. His government refuses to impose sanctions on Russia, has hosted sanctioned Kremlin officials with fanfare, and continues to block Kosovo’s international recognition. Vucic’s “support” for Ukraine is conditional, self-serving, and deeply dishonest. He does not stand with Ukraine; he merely stands against NATO, blaming the Alliance for intervening to stop Serbian war crimes in Kosovo while allowing Moscow to do the very same in Ukraine with impunity.

The West, too, must reckon with its own contradictions. By welcoming Vucic without consequences, it strengthens the very architecture of authoritarianism it claims to oppose. European, British and American policymakers cannot continue appeasing a leader whose ideology and actions mirror those of the Kremlin while expecting democratic stability in the Balkans or credibility in Ukraine.

The time for illusions is over. Vucic’s presence in Ukraine is not an act of solidarity. It is a geopolitical deception. His heart, his mind, and his political machinery reside in the Kremlin. Ukrainians must remain vigilant, and so must their allies. For in shaking Vucic’s hand, they risk clasping the very force they fight against.

The danger is real, and the consequences of naivety are too grave to ignore.

Outside, the streets were grey, the air heavy with the tension that has defined Ukraine since 2014, when the Kremlin, enraged by the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych, began the long, grinding conflict that culminated in the full-scale invasion of February 2022. Inside the cinema, though, the mood was charged with a different kind of electricity, not escape, but confrontation.

We had come to the 22nd International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival in Kyiv. The film we were about to witness was 2000 Metres to Andriivka1, a harrowing documentary by Mstyslav Chernov.

For me, the title alone cut deep: I had been to Andriivka during my trip through Ukraine last year. In the village, every tree had been shattered. No brick stood upon another. And yet, through the dust and the death, shoots of life dared to push upwards once more.

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As we waited for the lights to dim, the announcer’s voice rang through the hall, pragmatic and urgent:

It was a grim reminder of the reality outside these walls, a reality that would soon be magnified tenfold on the screen.

Then the film began.

There was no flourish, no soothing narrator to ease us in. Instead, there were helmet-camera footages, the raw, juddering gaze of men fighting for inches of scorched earth. The screen opened with a quote from Hemingway: “There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names.” A soldier’s face, dirt-smeared, framed by the walls of a trench, came into view. The war was immediate, visceral, unflinching.

Mstyslav Chernov, an Associated Press and Frontline journalist, along with Alex Babenko, embedded with Ukraine’s Third Assault Brigade, have created something rare and brutal: a film that does not explain war, but places you inside its beating heart.

Most of the documentary was the footage of soldiers advancing through the devastated forest towards Andriivka. It took them three months to cover two thousand metres. The forest, riddled with mines and fortified Russian positions, had claimed many lives. Watching their progress was to witness the meaning of attrition: every metre won was soaked in blood and grief.

The soldiers’ voices rose from the trenches, cries, orders, curses, gasps. The Ukrainian language fused with the universal tongue of war: pain and survival.

"Come on, brother, break it! Alive!"
"Blood is dripping!"
"Get out, bitch! In the face, brother!"
"We are stuck! Get out!"

At times, the screen dissolved into the chaos of an assault, bodies lurching, explosions shaking the camera, the screams of the wounded mingling with barked commands. Then, in breathless pauses, there was the heavy silence of exhaustion and death.

VIDEO: Inside the theatre, we wept. Outside, sirens howled. The war is here, now. It lives inside us, on screens, in trenches, in mothers’ empty arms.

Among these soldiers was Fedya, a young man with a scarred lip and a warehouse worker’s background before the war. His task was symbolic: he was to raise the Ukrainian flag over Andriivka once — and if — it was taken. The moments that captured him reading his orders in a bunker, calm amid carnage, were some of the film’s most affecting.

VIDEO: Fedya raised the flag: But there was no victory in his eyes, only a lifetime of dead friends and a war that will not let him go.

One of the film’s many heartbreaks was the story of “Freak”, a soldier who had joined the Territorial Defence at eighteen. He had once studied radio electronics in Kharkiv. Now, at twenty-two, he was leading men into battle. The film chillingly informed us that five months after this footage, he would be wounded in another forest and his body never recovered.

There was no narrative arc in 2000 Metres to Andriivka, no tidy story of victory. Each advance was met with horrific casualties. At one point, medics were stunned by the sheer number of wounded men coming from what, on a map, was a small strip of land. The images were relentless: splinters lodged in bodies, arms missing, men weeping from the cold and the shock.

"I have a fracture. It’s cold, you’ll get cold too. Come on!" one soldier urged another. Survival was measured by inches and by sheer will.

The brigade’s leader, Gagarin, was killed during one assault, his comrade holding his hand as he died in the mud. The documentary cut from the brutality of his death to the image of his mother grieving at his funeral, the 56th such funeral in her village.

One sentence from her stood out in stark relief: “We bury the parents of unborn children.” In that instant, the war’s monstrous generational theft became painfully clear.

By the time the Third Assault Brigade did finally take Andriivka, there was no village left to claim. The final metres were a wasteland of broken corpses and broken buildings. When Fedya raised the flag, the camera lingered on his face, worn and weary beyond his years. There was no triumph, only grim duty.

Throughout the film, the soldiers’ banter black-humoured, defiant underscored their humanity. They joked about rolling cigarettes, argued about aesthetics, spoke of their wives and their fears. These were young men robbed of ordinary futures. One soldier mused bitterly, “Maybe war is the coolest moment in life, when you can learn everything from scratch.” But the cost of that education was unbearable.

And then, after the credits rolled, something extraordinary happened.

VIDEO: In a powerful sequence from the film, Ukrainian soldier Fedya moves through the ruins of a devastated village, navigating the rubble of shattered homes. With determination, he reaches a crumbling brick wall and raises the Ukrainian flag, an act of defiance and resilience amidst the desolation of war. (Screenshots captured during the film screening.)

The lights rose

On stage appeared the real-life Fedya, the man we had just watched crawling through hell to plant a flag on a ruin. The audience stood and applauded for over fifteen minutes, unable to stop, unable to release the overwhelming tide of emotion.

He stood still, humble, not seeking glory. The producer spoke: “Remember those who fought for our freedom. Because they live among us only until we remember them. Glory to the nation. Glory to the heroes.”

One after another, soldiers and relatives came to the stage. A mother of a fallen soldier addressed us, voice trembling: “When your child is out for four days and you don’t hear from him, and then he writes that he’s alive — that is happiness you can’t describe. And when he is killed, you thank the comrades who bring him home.”

It was impossible not to weep.

I looked around the hall — veterans, young civilians, elderly women — many were crying openly. The war was not just on the screen. It lived in every heart present.

A young former soldier named Piro said simply: “Never forget to help those who are holding their arms. Without that, we cannot live.”

What stayed with me most, though, was a line from the film’s final moments. As the soldiers sheltered in the ruins of Andriivka, the narrator’s voice said, “I doubt Ukraine has enough resources to continue. I fear this land will remain a frozen frontline for years.”

It was not false hope the film offered, it was hard truth. No grand victory narrative. No illusions. Only resilience.

When we finally filed out into the night, the weight of the war felt heavier than before, not lighter. But also, perhaps, more human. These soldiers were not faceless heroes. They were frightened, brave, broken young men, clinging to one another in a hell not of their making.

In the darkness, Vovo and I did not speak for a long while. The city around us seemed quieter than before. And somewhere beyond its edges, the war rolled on.

For the international audience who will read this: know that this is not a conflict of abstract geopolitics. It is a war of lives, of parents who bury children, of children who grow up knowing only air raids and loss.

Andriivka is now free. But it no longer exists. It is a name, and a graveyard.

Remember them.

Because as long as we remember them, they will live.

Glory to Ukraine. Glory to the heroes.

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The words, issued by Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of Russia Today and reliable mouthpiece of the Kremlin, carried the unmistakable signature of menace. Her warning followed the announcement of a landmark agreement between Germany and Ukraine1, a pact to produce long-range weapons on Ukrainian soil, with no restrictions on range, no pretense of caution. Berlin had finally shown resolve. Moscow responded with a flash of nuclear-era bravado.

Simonyan’s threat that German-supplied Taurus missiles, if used by Ukraine, could prompt direct retaliation against Berlin, was not idle bluster. It was calibrated escalation. She claimed Ukrainian forces lacked the technical capability to operate the Taurus without German personnel, laying a rhetorical foundation for justifying future strikes on German targ…

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Donald J. Trump, the forty-seventh President of the United States, returned to office in January 2025 promising, in his typical register of braggadocio, to end the war between Russia and Ukraine in twenty-four hours. "Before I even arrive at the Oval Office," he said on the campaign trail, "it'll be over." When challenged on these claims later, he shrugged them off as sarcasm. But in Ukraine, sarcasm does not staunch blood. Irony does not bring back the dead.

The farcical grandiosity of Trumpian diplomacy was underscored only hours ago when, in a characteristically explosive statement, the President warned that Vladimir Putin was "playing with fire" and that "really bad things" would have happened to Russia if not for his intervention2. Within minutes, Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian President and current Deputy Chair of Russia's Security Council, responded on social media with an ominous reminder3: "I only know of one REALLY BAD thing — WWIII. I hope Trump understands this!"

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This is not how peacemaking begins. It is how brinkmanship spirals.

I returned to Ukraine on 24 May 2025. Lviv, once a refuge for the displaced from the east, now feels like a mausoleum. The vibrancy that marked its cafés in 2023, when hope was still currency, has been reduced to a whisper. People speak more with their eyes now, and their eyes are hollow.

In four years of covering this war, I have seen Ukraine transform from defiant to desperate. In 2022, the invasion shocked the world, and unity against Putin's aggression appeared as natural as breath. In 2023, the West still made noise: pledges, sanctions, visits. By 2024, the decibel had lowered to a hum of logistical excuses. Now, in 2025, even that hum is being drowned out by the static of political convenience.

Behind closed doors in Brussels and Washington, Ukraine has been recast not as a sovereign democracy under siege, but as an inconvenient riddle. European leaders, once full of bombast and banners, now speak of "restraint," "balance," and "geopolitical stability." But what they mean is fear. Fear of escalation. Fear of Putin. Fear of costs.

A Ukrainian civil engineer, whom I have known since 2019, now earns just over $900 a month rebuilding infrastructure obliterated by Russian missiles. The same role in Berlin would fetch four times as much. He shrugged when I asked if he would leave. "Where would I go? Europe? They have left us already."

This is not just abandonment. It is exploitation. Western corporations now outsource to Ukraine with the cheeriness of saviours but the pay scales of scavengers. One software engineer working remotely for a London-based fintech startup earns less than a quarter of his British counterparts. The same company issued a public statement in 2023 lauding its "unwavering support for Ukraine."

This is not support. This is economic colonialism with a humanitarian face.

And yet, the deeper betrayal is moral. In 2014, Ukrainians tore down the edifice of Russian influence, believing the West would fill the vacuum with solidarity. Instead, they received platitudes and watched as Crimea was annexed with minimal response. In 2022, the full-scale invasion renewed Western conviction, but only just. Weapons were delivered on delay. Defences rationed. Red lines blurred.

Donald Trump is not the cause of this betrayal, but he is its culmination. The man who once extorted Ukraine for political dirt, who called Putin "a genius" days before the invasion, now lectures Kyiv about missed opportunities. "You're either going to make a deal or we're out," he recently said. This is not negotiation. It is coercion.

When asked about his earlier claims of solving the war in a day, Trump conceded, "I was being a little bit sarcastic." This sarcasm now finds its echo in the West's broader posture: we stand with Ukraine, but not quite. We defend democracy, but not really. We oppose aggression, but only incrementally.

The results are visible on the streets of Lviv, where hunger has become commonplace and medicine a luxury. They are audible in the sobs of mothers who bury sons, and in the terse voices of commanders who lack the artillery they were promised. One general, weeping in frustration, told me, "We held them back for a year with hope. But hope doesn't kill tanks."

In Kyiv, President Zelensky soldiers on, his charisma weathered into grim determination. He remains the West's favourite photo opportunity, even as its patience thins. During his latest address, he pleaded again for air defences, for systems that had been promised but never arrived. "We are not asking for charity," he said. "We are asking for a chance."

But in Washington, fatigue has set in. Biden's departure ushered in not resolve, but retreat. Trump's foreign policy now leans towards spectacle over substance. His so-called peace plan, if one exists, remains as opaque as his finances. And in Europe, leaders like Macron and Starmer choose silence over strategy. Ursula von der Leyen, once a vocal supporter, now speaks in measured tones about "sustainable resolutions."

The world loves the drama of resistance but recoils at its maintenance. And so Ukraine is kept alive, barely, through the drip-feed of conditional aid. Enough to fight. Never enough to win.

Yet amid this desolation, something stubborn endures. Ukraine, hollowed by abandonment, has not collapsed into helplessness. In fact, it has innovated. “The tanks and heavy equipment that Ukraine needed from others don’t matter as much as they did two years ago,” Anne Applebaum wrote in The Atlantic this week4. “On the front line, this conflict has become a drone war… Ukraine both produces drones more than 2 million last year, and builds software and systems to run them.”

Her reporting from Lviv tells of a country that has adapted not out of luxury, but out of necessity. Where Western promises failed, Ukrainian ingenuity filled the vacuum. One frontline unit, she noted, has begun deploying fighting robots. Others compete in contests measuring the precision of drone strikes. In a war defined by attrition and betrayal, Ukrainians have created incentives for innovation that shame the bureaucratic inertia of their allies.

Applebaum also describes Superhumans, a rehabilitation center for war victims in Lviv, as a place of “optimism and hope,” where technicians craft bespoke limbs and therapists help the injured regain purpose. It is a kind of national alchemy: the transformation of pain into purpose, of ruin into resilience.

There is a danger here beyond the battlefield. As Ukrainians feel the weight of abandonment, some may begin to look East not with affection, but with resignation. Not because they love Russia, but because they feel forgotten by the West. This would be a strategic catastrophe. But more importantly, it would be a moral one.

Western democracies have long proclaimed their values: liberty, dignity, sovereignty. Ukraine believed in them. Died for them. What it has received is a masterclass in hypocrisy. And history, though often late, does not forget.

If Ukraine falls, it will not be a failure of defence, but a failure of will. And the guilt will not lie in Kyiv alone. It will lie in London, In Brussels, in Paris, in Washington. In every capital where leaders chose caution over courage, optics over obligation.

The war that should never have happened, the war that was once promised to be ended in a day, now drags into its eleventh year, and its fourth year in full-scale. It is no longer merely a war of bullets; it is a war of consciences. And the West is losing.

But history does not wait for consensus. Nor does tyranny. If Washington retreats into the theatre of isolationism, then it falls to Europe, not as a collection of cautious technocrats, but as a union of conscience to act. Ukraine is not merely a buffer state; it is the moral frontier of this century. Each village razed, each child buried beneath rubble, is not just a failure of defence, but of imagination of what Europe believes itself to be. To yield now is to admit that values are seasonal, that sovereignty is negotiable, and that freedom is a luxury contingent on electoral cycles. The language of hesitation of “geopolitical balance” and “strategic patience” must give way to action. Decisive, unified, and unapologetic. Not because Ukraine is perfect, but because it is free. And freedom, once abandoned, is rarely recovered without blood. If the West still claims to stand for something, now is the time to prove it, not with speeches, but with steel. Not tomorrow, but today.