LAUREN FRAYER, HOST:
At the heart of the negotiations between Ukraine and Russia is how much, if any, territory Russia keeps, like Crimea or provinces Russia claims are culturally more Russian than Ukrainian. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley recently visited one of those, and she asked people living there what they think of the proposals they're hearing.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: On a Saturday morning at the youth center in the town of Zaporizhzhia, several dozen volunteers are weaving strips of cloth into a giant net to make camouflage netting for the Ukrainian army. We're in the capital of the southeastern province of Zaporizhzhia. Russian forces control two-thirds of it, but this city, the biggest in the province and a major industrial hub, remains firmly in Ukrainian hands.
KATERYNA KYSHKAN: It was terrible. It was very scary because a lot of tanks and bombs and they come into my house.
BEARDSLEY: That's 36-year-old Kateryna Kyshkan (ph) describing life under Russian occupation before she fled in the summer of 2023.
KYSHKAN: (Speaking Ukrainian).
BEARDSLEY: "I stayed so long," she says, "because I really thought the Ukrainian army would save us."
KYSHKAN: (Speaking Ukrainian) Mikhaylovka (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Mikhaylovka is here. You see? Is here. Here.
KYSHKAN: Then we came through Donetsk Oblast, Donetska.
BEARDSLEY: She shows the route she and her 14-year-old daughter took to get out. They had to pass through Russian checkpoints, where they underwent an intense search and interrogation process known as filtration.
(SOUNDBITE OF AIR RAID SIREN)
BEARDSLEY: There are no Russian soldiers in the city of Zaporizhzhia, but air raid sirens wail many times a day to warn of incoming Russian drones and missiles. We drive through mostly empty streets to meet another family who fled Russian occupation.
Hello.
ALYONA SERDYUK: Nice to meet you.
BEARDSLEY: Eleanor.
SERDYUK: Alyona (ph). Alyona .
BEARDSLEY: Hello. Eleanor.
SERDYUK: This is my husband...
SERGEY VASYLKO: Hello.
BEARDSLEY: Oh.
SERDYUK: Sergey (ph).
BEARDSLEY: Nice to meet you, Sergey.
Twenty-three-year-olds Alyona Serdyuk (ph) and Sergey Vasylko (ph) are engaged to be married. We take the elevator to the sixth-floor apartment where they live with her parents.
SERDYUK: This house with my parents, mother and father.
BEARDSLEY: Serdyuk says her family fled the town of Komysh-Zoria, about 50 miles southeast of here, a few months after Russian troops arrived.
SERDYUK: It was difficult, of course, because my family, my mother, father, we live in our village all our lives.
BEARDSLEY: She says young women were scared to go out alone. It was lawless.
SERDYUK: They do what they want. Want to kill? Kill. Want to confiscate car? Confiscate car. Confiscate house also. In our street, they killed two child and mother there and father there because they was alcohol.
BEARDSLEY: Drunk Russian soldiers killed an entire family one night. Serdyuk says everyone who could left. A family from Russian-occupied Crimea has since moved into their house. A neighbor who stayed behind says the intruders are taking care of it. I asked them how they deal with this.
SERDYUK: We don't have other way. We cannot do nothing. Nothing.
BEARDSLEY: They heard about what President Trump's special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, Steve Witkoff, said about their region, even though he seemed unable to name it in his interview with Tucker Carlson.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
STEVE WITKOFF: I think the largest issue in that conflict are these so-called four regions, Donbas...
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
WITKOFF: ...Crimea. You know, the names...
CARLSON: Lugansk, yeah.
WITKOFF: Lugansk, and there's two others. They're Russian-speaking.
CARLSON: Yeah.
WITKOFF: There have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule.
BEARDSLEY: Alyona Serdyuk and her mother, Vita (ph), say they were stunned. They say people hid or voted out of fear during that Russian referendum held at gunpoint 2 1/2 years ago. It was ruled illegal by the U.N. General Assembly.
SERDYUK: It's scary. We don't agree with his politics because it's our homes. It our home.
BEARDSLEY: Back home, they owned a bakery.
SERDYUK: Before war, we have really good life. We have house, we have business. We have travels.
BEARDSLEY: "We spoke Russian," says Vita Serdyuk. "Nobody was persecuted for their language." As a justification for the war, the Kremlin argued that Russian speakers in Ukraine were persecuted. Serdyuk says now it's disgusting to speak the language of the occupier, and they've all switched to Ukrainian.
(SOUNDBITE OF PHONE RINGING)
VASYLKO: Hello.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
VASYLKO: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).
VASYLKO: (Non-English language spoken).
BEARDSLEY: Vasylko's grandparents stayed behind under Russian occupation. He calls them every day. The grandparents have their own garden and can grow vegetables, but medicine is scarce, and with most health care workers now gone, it's difficult if they need to see a doctor.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
SERDYUK: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
BEARDSLEY: They talk about the weather or Vasylko's favorite sports, soccer, but never about the war or topics that could put his grandparents at risk.
VASYLKO: (Non-English language spoken).
SERDYUK: (Non-English language spoken).
VASYLKO: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
VASYLKO: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
(SOUNDBITE OF BEEPING)
BEARDSLEY: "See you soon," says Vasylko. This family is still hoping to return home and be reunited, but they admit it's looking less and less likely as the war drags on.
BEARDSLEY: Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.
(SOUNDBITE OF ESTHER ABRAMI ET AL.'S "CONCERTO FOR VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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