Kyiv, Ukraine – Immediately after visitors set foot in the cafeteria bearing Donald Trump’s name in the Ukrainian capital, they see an anti-Russian reworking of the US president-elect’s most famous war cry.

Inspired by Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, an illuminated “Make Russia Small Again” sign sparkles above the display of cakes and donuts.

Most Ukrainians would like to see their arch enemy reduced to the size of the small principality that has surrounded Moscow for centuries.

But their views of Trump’s ability to downplay Russia, stop or freeze the war, and pave the way for Kiev’s membership in NATO and the European Union, range from rosy optimism to dismal rejection.

Trump’s cafeteria manager believes his idol’s “hard-line” political tactics and business acumen will help end the war immediately.

Roman Kravtsov, a bearded 27-year-old, told Al Jazeera: “Given his style on the political scene and his way of doing business, I think he will be very cautious, but he will take courageous steps to resolve this crisis.”

“He is a man of his word. He acts immediately. He is an uncompromising man,” said Kravtsov, who hails from the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, which has been controlled by pro-Russian separatists since 2014.

Kravtsov, who dreams of Trump visiting his cafeteria, wants to pick his brain about the art of business deals.

But he worries that Ukraine is barely at the top of Trump’s agenda.

“I’m not sure Ukraine is even on his top five priority list,” he said.

“There’s no more ammunition.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he expected “strong” security guarantees from Trump before any peace agreement.

“We want to finish [the war] With a just peace, we must be sure that Russia will not return to war against Ukraine again. “We need strong security guarantees,” he said on Wednesday.

However, for some Ukrainian soldiers on the war’s front lines, Trump embodies the West’s perpetual collective failure to rein in Russia.

In 2014, Moscow annexed Crimea and supported separatist forces – but Western sanctions have not led to Russian President Vladimir Putin backing down.

In 2022, when the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, the West pledged to supply Kiev with missiles, tanks, artillery, ammunition and combat aircraft.

But the delivery of almost all items was delayed, leading to lost opportunities to reclaim the occupied territories and countless casualties, according to Ukrainian forces and observers.

Only a handful of F-16 fighter jets landed in Ukraine last summer after years of promises and deliberation.

We needed planes when we counterattacked [in early 2023]“When we had the manpower, when we had the ammunition,” a Ukrainian soldier still on the front line despite his serious injuries told Al Jazeera.

Due to Trump’s pressure on Republican members of Congress, a US aid package worth $61 billion was stalled for several months and was not approved until April 2024.

The delay cost Ukraine thousands of lives, the soldier said, while Russian forces regained the initiative and continued to advance in the east, albeit slowly and with horrific losses.

“Lives have been lost, there are fewer people fighting, but there is no more ammunition. That’s why [the Russians] “Keep pushing,” the soldier said.

Trump has repeatedly said he would end the war “within 24 hours,” but he has never explained his plan.

However, his team has hinted that he might allow Russia to keep occupied parts of four Ukrainian regions plus Crimea.

They may also insist on a ban on Ukraine’s NATO membership for years or decades.

“Ukraine Can’t Push Russia Back: Rubio.”

Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, said on Wednesday that Russia and Ukraine would need to make “concessions” — and that Moscow might keep the occupied territories.

“It’s also not possible for Ukraine to push these people back to where they were on the eve of the invasion,” Rubio said.

After months of silence about his “peace plan,” “Trump will have to come clean,” says Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

“Now is the time to show responsibility for his words,” he told Al Jazeera.

Romanenko is confident that Trump’s “24-hour plan” is likely to turn into “a very difficult process that could take up to six months.”

A ban on Kiev’s membership in NATO and the European Union could spark a crisis among pro-Western politicians in Ukraine who have for decades urged their voters to abandon the Moscow-dominated blocs.

A violent popular revolution that lasted for months toppled pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 after he agreed to join a free trade zone with Russia.

Kiev-based analyst Alexei Kosh told Al Jazeera that Ukraine’s pro-Western agenda was largely based on the assumption that inevitable NATO membership “solves our security problems, and the EU takes care of our economic development.”

Aspirations were a slogan of the pro-Western liberal democrats [who urged Ukrainians to] “Vote for us, and we will soon lead Ukraine into the European Union and NATO,” he said.

Front line battles

Ahead of Trump’s inauguration, Ukrainian forces continue to lose territory on the eastern front and are unable to expand the small area under their control in the Kursk region in western Russia.

“This will show in a very negative way to the new US administration our ability to defend ourselves,” Yuri Butusov, a journalist-turned-soldier, wrote on Facebook on Wednesday.

But on Tuesday night, Kiev carried out its largest drone attack on Russian military infrastructure, involving more than 200 drones.

For the first time, they carried glide bombs that were launched just kilometers before the drones reached their targets.

The attack caused damage to fuel depots and oil refineries in the Volga River region, which produces a rare type of fuel for Russian strategic bombers that fire missiles at Ukraine.

Military analyst Pavlo Narozny said in televised statements: “This is why the strikes on the refineries that produce them are very important.”