Ukraine is getting hit by more Russian attacks as the Trump administration peace plan moves into public debate. Western audiences see headlines about corruption, energy shortages, and battlefield setbacks, yet often miss how Ukrainians themselves interpret these crises.
Liliane Bivings, an editor at the Kyiv Independent, says the country’s story is of resilience and a fight for dignity that outsiders misunderstand.
Bivings arrived in Ukraine in 2017 as a Peace Corps volunteer after a trip to Russia. She says she “came to Ukraine in 2017 to teach English, fell in love with the country immediately, and decided I was going to stay here forever and build my career here.” Journalism came by accident, but when the full-scale invasion began, “it really felt like it was my duty to stay here and be here.”
She describes Ukraine as a place of constant upheaval and renewal. The years after the 2014 revolution, the COVID period, and the war produced “constant rapid transformation.” She acknowledges “all this tragedy and sadness,” yet sees people “defending their country, defending freedom, defending their right to exist.” She notes that the Kyiv Independent existed only three months before the invasion and that “everybody stayed in Ukraine to continue reporting on the war from the ground.” Even in Kyiv today, she says, “cafes, restaurants, bars are opening up, new businesses are starting,” which she calls “a beautiful example of humanity.”
The recent corruption scandal, widely cited by skeptics abroad, looks different to those inside Ukraine. According to Bivings, Ukraine’s anti-corruption activists “talk about it more than anyone…They expose it, they talk about it…so that the world can help them change.” She stresses that Ukraine is “just barely 34 years old” and that “ten years of its independence have been war,” making development difficult. She frames the struggle as a constant clash between those “working tirelessly to make the country a better place” and those “hellbent on making sure that it doesn’t change.”
She links part of the corrupt mindset to trauma from the Soviet collapse and the chaotic 1990s, when survival meant focusing on “me, myself and I and my family.” She describes a mentality of grabbing what one can “in case all hell really breaks loose here,” though she stresses this is “not an excuse” for stealing.
The current scandal centers on Ukraine’s state nuclear company, which became a wartime monopoly as Russia attacked the grid but avoided directly striking reactors. That left the sector “ripe for these people” who orchestrated the scheme. She says Ukrainians enduring blackouts are “rightfully so, devastated…that given the situation, people would be stealing from that very sector.”
Politically, she says civil society wants deeper accountability. “People, even like Yermak, chief of staff, will have to be replaced” for Ukrainians to feel justice has been done. She says Zelenskyy shows no sign he will remove him, calling Yermak “not just his right hand man, he’s his right arm.” The resignations of two ministers are “a good sign,” but she notes Ukrainians have seen ministers “resign and then appear somewhere else.”
On the new peace proposal, Bivings says Ukrainians feel worn down because “every few months there’s a peace plan, and then versions of it start getting leaked,” which she calls “the boy who cried wolf story.” This round feels different, she says, because it arrives amid a corruption scandal, an energy crisis, a weak economy, and “maybe the worst” battlefield situation of the war.
She argues any settlement must protect Ukrainian dignity. She recalls that during the 2013-14 revolution “100 people were killed,” and that tens of thousands have died since. For Ukrainians, she says, “it’s about dignity…that I did not do this for nothing.” A broken, imposed outcome would signal “actually, no one really cares” and hand Russia a victory.
