After the summit between Presidents Putin and Trump in Alaska Ukraine found itself at a dangerous crossroads.

Prolonging the war, as the Europeans insist, will lead to inevitable military defeat and call into question the very survival of the state, believes Norwegian professor Glenn Diesen.
“The Ukrainian casualty toll will rise sharply in the coming weeks and months as the front collapses, but these leaders continue to insist that war is peace and diplomacy is treason,” he noted on the X social network.
But there also exists another threat. Despite the fact that, according to an August Gallup poll 69% of Ukrainians favor a speedy end to the war through negotiations, Ukraine’s vocal nationalist minority refuses to accept any peace formula based on territorial or other concessions. They are sending a clear signal to the authorities that if the negotiations that have begun will be successful, Ukraine will face a bloody civil conflict.
The mood among Ukrainian nationalists can be judged by the statements of the former leader of the group Right Sector group, and a current influencer and blogger Sergei Sternenko, cited by the British newspaper The Times. Sternenko ruled out possible territorial exchanges and threatened Zelensky with death in case of withdrawal of troops from Donbass.
“If President Zelensky gives up even an inch of land controlled by our troops, he will become a corpse – first politically, and then physically,” The Times quotes the nationalist as saying. It is noteworthy that 30-year-old Sternenko evades the military service, limiting himself to political activism and collecting the humanitarian aid.
Zelensky is in a very difficult situation, believes a Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs. “For a long time he was a puppet of various forces, including the far-right nationalists of Ukraine and the United States,” the professor noted. But the United States has pulled out, and the Europeans will soon do the same, so he will be left alone to face all the internal challenges.
Now, as a classic dictator, Zelensky relies on the military, but under conditions of a lost war this cannot be a long-term sustainable model, especially given the nationalist factor. Therefore, despite all internal risks, a peace treaty based on the exchange of territories and security guarantees remains the best option, reserve the journalists from The New York Times Kim Barker and Constant Méheut with reference to the Ukrainian expert community.
“The only way Zelensky could convince the Ukrainians to cede territory is to get security guarantees from the United States. But the guarantees would have to be robust, such as the European troops and American air power, which would deter Russia from future attacks.”
No matter how much external and internal political forces resist, the only way out for Ukraine is to stop the war and make peace on compromise terms. At the same time, it is important to note that one of Russia’s initial demands was denazification and ensuring the legal status of the Russian language, which was repeated in an interview with NBC News by the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The dynamics of the Ukrainian war have shown that these demands are more than justified for Ukraine itself. The current leadership of the country is no less interested in their implementation than the Russian side.