This Friday, President Trump will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. They will reportedly discuss ending the war in Ukraine, although Mr. Trump has been vague about the agenda. We should listen to Ukrainians’ suspicions about Mr. Putin’s goal in asking for this meeting. Nevertheless, the summit offers a vital opportunity to reflect on the human values that should guide any efforts toward peace. For example, freedom of movement for displaced Ukrainians should be part of any negotiations to secure a peace that is at least proximally just and humane.

In May, I visited the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia to meet with nongovernmental organizations supporting internally displaced people from territory presently occupied by Russia. Russian forces are just 12 miles away, and they regularly attack with missiles and drones. Despite the dangers, the city’s population has grown since 2022 and is now about 700,000. Many of the newcomers arrive from areas currently under Russian occupation. They come to be close to their former homes, Vitalia Vovk, the principal of Zaporizhzhia’s St. Don Bosco parochial school, said. 

“Most of them stay in Zaporizhzhia with the hope that they will be able to return home soon,” Ms. Vovk told me while showing me around the tidy wood structures of Don Bosco’s suburban campus. It makes a psychological difference to be near occupied territory, she said, even if the front line has been closed to civilian traffic since late 2022. 

“They want to be closer to their homes and to the people who remained under occupation,” Ms. Vovk explained.

Vitalia and her husband, the Rev. Roman Vovk, a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest, have experienced displacement themselves. Father Vovk had been serving a parish in Donetsk Province for 13 years when Russian soldiers occupied the area in 2014. (This was part of the initial wave of Russian incursions into Donetsk and Luhansk Province that preceded the 2022 full-scale invasion.) Today, he uses encrypted messaging apps to stay in touch with his former parishioners, especially since Russian authorities in the occupied territory have outlawed the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

“The fact that we are keeping in touch sends a message that they are not forgotten and that they still belong to the same community of the faithful,” Father Vovk said. 

When I asked Father Vovk if he would go back to see them, were he allowed to do so, he nodded and said, “I would be very happy to see and talk to the people I know, to give them hugs.” 

Vitalia and Roman Vovk oversee a thriving school and parish, and they say they have no interest in going back permanently to the town in Donetsk Province where they served, no matter what happens in the negotiations. Other internally displaced people I met in Zaporizhzhia said they are in a similar position. Throughout Ukraine, many thousands have been displaced and cut off from family in occupied territory. After years of brutal Russian attacks, they of course do not want to live under Russian rule; they simply want to visit their former homes if given the chance.

Will there be de jure or de facto recognition of Russia’s sovereignty over the occupied territory? U.S. media coverage has reduced efforts to craft a just peace in Ukraine to this legalistic either-or. It certainly matters, but displaced people, grievously affected by the war, are focused on more practical questions. If the fighting stops, will civilians be allowed freedom of movement into occupied territory? Will they be able to see their family members again?

Resolving these questions might actually help bring a semblance of healing, if not justice, to Ukraine’s war-torn communities. 

Nuclear instability

Zaporizhzhia is also known for its namesake nuclear plant, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station. The station is 30 miles from the city, in territory currently controlled by Russia. In 2022, the plant’s Ukrainian staff stayed behind to run the station even as Russian soldiers took over the area. About 3,000 Ukrainians continue to operate the reactors—to ensure the plant’s safety while the reactors are in cold shutdown—but Russian military officers oversee their work. 

A Russian service member stands guard at a checkpoint near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant on June 15, 2023. (OSV News photo/Alexander Ermochenko, Reuters)

These same Russian forces have also been credibly accused of using the site to store weapons. In 2022, after reports of fighting near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear station, the International Atomic Energy Agency sent a team of observers. During an emergency press conference, the I.A.E.A. scientists described craters in buildings holding radioactive material and called out Russian authorities for turning the plant into a “nuclear shield” by placing military equipment on site. 

At the Don Bosco school, administrators have been forced to take precautions in case of a nuclear accident. During my tour, Vitalia took me down a brightly lit stairwell and explained that last year the school had retrofitted the basement into a series of classrooms. I saw individual desks set in tidy rows and children’s artwork on the walls, but of course there were no windows.

“There are the missiles but also the danger of radiation,” Ms. Vovk said.

“These classrooms are a symbol of our dedication to keeping children safe,” Father Vovk added.

Schools throughout Zaporizhzhia have been forced to hold instruction in bunkers. These classrooms are a terrifying reminder that the war in Ukraine is unprecedented in human history. Never before has armed conflict taken place in and around civilian nuclear power facilities. 

I contacted Dmytro Sherengovsky, the vice rector for outreach at Lviv’s Ukrainian Catholic University and an expert in security and conflict studies, about the plant’s future. “The most realistic immediate step,” Mr. Sherengovsky wrote in an email, “is to strengthen the IAEA mission on site—expanding it from symbolic monitoring to a more permanent, empowered presence with the ability to report in real time and publicly.” The plant’s long-term future, which ideally will include demilitarization and a return to full Ukrainian operational control, should be front and center in any peace negotiation.

Toward a just peace

A perfect harmonization of peace and justice would create a way for Russian society to acknowledge the invasion as a grave moral failure. Justice also requires that Russian troops withdraw behind Ukraine’s 1991 borders, and Russian military and civilian leaders should submit to war crimes prosecution by legitimate international authorities. Such measures may prove impossible under current circumstances. Nevertheless, negotiators should try to secure freedom of movement for internally displaced Ukrainians, and the right to visit relatives and former homes. Even if Ukraine is forced to compromise on its just demand that Russia return illegally occupied territory, some affirmation of the value of human relationships—however limited—is possible. 

We should be skeptical that Trump administration negotiators will grasp these on-the-ground complexities and the questions they pose. It is not a good sign that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who continues to command significant respect at home, was shut out of the initial summit planning. But as the Trump administration re-engages with the peace process, the renewed media attention can nonetheless serve to broaden our perspective on a just and humane peace for Ukraine.

Dr. Marc Roscoe Loustau (www.marcloustau.org) is a cultural anthropologist and expert on Eastern European religion and politics. He lives in Budapest, Hungary. He is the author of the Substack newsletter At the Edges, With Marc Loustau.