I've lived in Ukraine for almost four years - the mood here is the darkest it's been since the invasion

Last week, after US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ruled out Nato membership for Ukraine and said a return to the country’s 2014 orders was unrealistic, I messaged a Ukrainian MP for his reaction. He replied with a YouTube link to the trailer of the film Darkest Hour.

Since then, and in just a few short days, things have become exponentially worse.

Ukrainians have long-feared being abandoned by the US, but the actions of President Donald Trump in recent days hint at something most thought was unconscionable – an outright betrayal.

Even though the so-called peace talks in Saudi Arabia ended with no concrete agreements, the Kremlin got exactly what it wanted; its officials posing front and centre on the global stage – with Ukraine excluded entirely – at a meeting where they were treated as equal partners with the most powerful country in the world.

Russia is nothing of the sort – its economy is less than a tenth of the size of the US’, its army has been reduced to forcing men on crutches to attack Ukrainian positions, and demographic experts question if it will even be a viable state by the end of the century.

After the talks in Saudi Arabia, Marco Rubio said he was “convinced” his Russian counterparts were “willing to begin to engage in a serious process” to end its own full-scale invasion. Ask people in Kyiv about the prospect of a peace agreement, and there will be one thing that comes up repeatedly: “You can’t trust Putin.”

This view isn’t just an opinion, it’s a demonstrable fact learned by Ukrainians multiple times over decades. Remember, these are the same people that repeatedly said they had no plans to invade Ukraine, right up until the very moment they did.

In Saudi Arabia, a naive team of US negotiators was played by an adversary that operates by a completely different set of rules, in which truth plays no part.

After the talks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed a US suggestion of a moratorium on civilian energy grid strikes, saying it wasn’t needed as Russia doesn’t target Ukraine’s civilian energy structure. That night, Russia launched almost 150 kamikaze drones at Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure, something which currently is a daily occurrence – getting an uninterrupted night’s sleep in Kyiv and not being woken by the sound of air defenses and exploding drones is a rare thing.

Despite the indisputable facts of the last three years, Trump now insists Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnky is the “dictator”, and Vladimir Putin is the kinda guy he can make a deal with. It doesn’t just feel like a change in geopolitics, it’s a change in reality; on Wednesday morning “who started the Ukraine war” was one of the top search terms in the US after Trump falsely accused Ukraine of doing so.

History is being rewritten before our eyes: Ukraine took up arms to defend itself against a tyrant, a concept that’s about as American as it gets. Yet Americans are being told by their own president that they somehow deserved to be invaded – and people are believing it.

It’s become almost a cliche to accuse people of spreading Russian propaganda but both Trump and Elon Musk are now attacking Zelesnky, in ways that are so untrue it’s difficult to understand what their strategy is, if there actually is one. As I write this, Musk has claimed on X that people in Ukraine “despise” Zelensky. The truth is that, ironically, Trump’s attacks this week have only boosted Zelensky’s already significant support in the country (his approval rating is actually higher than Trump’s).

“[Zelensky] tries to do his best for us and helps as much as he can,” one woman told the Kyiv Independent in a vox pop earlier this week.

Attacking Zelesnky’s legitimacy is a play straight from the Kremlin playbook, designed to undermine Ukraine and sow discord, making the job of a Russian takeover of the country that bit easier. Even if it’s part of a negotiation strategy over Ukraine’s rare earths, the damage has already been done.

I’ve lived in Ukraine for almost four years now, and the mood here is the darkest it’s been since the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion. The lack of a coordinated response from Europe, and the current lack of any opposition to Trump in the US has Ukrainians feeling like they’re on their own, but they’re still a long way from feeling defeated.

“We made it in 2022, and we’ll do it again,” one friend messaged me, adding: “With them, without them.”

What Ukrainians want from the UK and Europe is leadership, a coordinated response to a White House that is embracing a dictator and discarding the fundamental values that the West purports to uphold.

Ukraine has been fighting for these values for three years, on European soil, and it’s the least they deserve.

Chris York is a journalist living in Kyiv