'Without Ukraine. Without Europe': Russian Pro-War Blogs React to U.S. Statements on Ukraine

Russian pro-war bloggers reacted to the news that Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump had agreed to start negotiations on ending the war in Ukraine — potentially without considering Kyiv’s key peace goals — with a mixture of praise and caution.

These bloggers, often referred to as Z-bloggers or Z-correspondents, are influential voices in wartime Russia, with hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of followers and the relative freedom to speak critically of the war effort.

War correspondent Alexander Kots told his readers that he didn’t understand some observers' confident predictions of where the talks between the two presidents would lead and urged them to look at the form, not the content, of their latest conversation.

“Trump has turned off the [character of a] political goon, presenting himself in his conversation with Putin as a diplomat speaking respectfully to his partner. Not like he addresses Canada or Denmark, but as an equal,” he wrote.

Kots continued by asserting that Ukraine would not decide “anything,” calling it a “drug addict state” — a common Russian propaganda trope — with “plenty of dependencies on the West.”

On Europe, he wrote: “Yesterday, these isolationists turned their noses squeamishly, even turning their heads in the direction of Moscow. And today they are shoving each other with their elbows and shouting through the closing door: ‘Let us in too!’”

Rybar, an account reportedly run by a former Defense Ministry employee, called for caution, noting that the sides had “only agreed to talk further” and that neither side’s preconditions had vanished.

“However, what happened [this week] stands out strongly from past events, where the official position of the collective West was reduced to ‘not a word about Ukraine without Ukraine.’ As you can see, this has now been forgotten,” the post continued. 

Another post on the channel warned that many of the Trump team’s statements were meant to “justify political decisions” to the U.S. public.

Starshe Eddy, a Russian pro-war Telegram channel with around 600,000 subscribers, wrote that the two presidents’ agreement to launch peace talks “meant nothing on its own.” 

“It can and will mean a lot if Trump manages to sell both Congress and the allies on the terms of peace — with a real change of power in Ukraine and its demilitarization [as Russia demands]. Without that, no matter how great the agreement is in theory, it will be a postponement until the next war, which we will have to fight in worse conditions than we have now.”

Igor Strelkov (Girkin) — the former Russian intelligence officer and separatist commander convicted of war crimes in The Hague who is currently serving a four-year sentence in Russian prison on unrelated charges — wrote that he did not believe in the truce. Strelkov called it a “pathetic effort by some of our ‘VIP officials’ to hide the fact of our strategic defeat in Ukraine.”

“Most of them do not care at all how this war will end — with victory or defeat. And no one thinks about the consequences — ‘business as usual’,” he continued.

In another post on his channel, Strelkov wrote that he believed the fighting would drag on at least until the summer. “Stopping a war is much more difficult than starting one,” he wrote. 

Fighterbomber, a popular pro-war account, was ecstatic. “‘Vae victis’ — woe to the vanquished. The full meaning of this phrase for Ukraine is unfolding before our eyes,” they wrote.

“The predictions are coming true: when it comes to Ukraine, the real decisions are made between Russia and the U.S. Without Ukraine. Without Europe… All the desires, hopes and expectations of Ukraine have been crossed out in one day. I am talking about the aspirations of ordinary Ukrainians.” 

“Russia, if it helps new Ukraine in its reconstruction, it will do so only where and as much as it wants… Humanitarian aid. So that they don't die. One f***ing nation,” the post reads.

The Telegram channel Turned to War gloated that Trump had “taken a carrot away from the collective donkey-[anti-Ukrainian slur]; he said that Ukraine will not be in NATO and he is fully satisfied with it. [Zelensky] has one last carrot left: that they are about to be brought into the EU and immediately westernized.”

Television propagandist Vladimir Solovyov compared the length of Trump’s social media posts about his calls with Putin and Zelensky.

“Donald Trump commented extensively and insightfully on his conversation with Vladimir Putin, while limiting himself to a short note about his dialog with Zelensky. 315 vs. 107 words,” Solovyov said. This, he argued, shows the difference in how much Trump respects the two leaders.

Colonel Kvachkov, a former Russian intelligence officer, wrote that the media was “fantasizing about the joy and emotion of the phone conversation between Putin and Trump,” while others were fantasizing about stock market growth. 

However, he called on readers to remember that Russia’s national interest was to “restore the unity of the Russian people, as well as Russia itself. And this means that all Russian lands, including Galicia [western Ukraine], must become part of the Russian Federation, like the DNR, LNR, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.”