More Ukrainians Appear Open to a Peace Deal
KYIV, Ukraine — Olha Predchenko held hands with her 85-year-old mother as they looked at the makeshift memorial on the grass in central Kyiv, each blue and yellow flag marked with the name of a soldier who had died fighting in the war with Russia.
They come here often to Maidan Square, to spend time thinking about the dead and the war. Ms. Predchenko said she dreamed of something heavy falling on the Kremlin. But she also hoped for a peace deal soon.
“Better a bad peace than a good war,” added Ms. Predchenko, 61.
Increasingly frustrated, more Ukrainians appear to be opening up to the idea of a negotiated peace, even as they remain vague about what that means.
Most Ukrainians still oppose ceding any territory to Russia, not even the Crimean peninsula that was seized by Russia 10 years ago, polls show. But those polls and recent remarks by the country’s leaders also highlight a palpable shift in the conversation around peace talks — from a no-deal-not-ever to a maybe-compromise-at-some-point.
In mid-July, a survey by the Ukrainian independent media outlet ZN.UA found that about 44 percent of Ukrainian civilians favored starting official talks with Russia. On July 23, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology released a poll showing that nearly a third of Ukrainians would agree to cede some territory to Russia to end the war. That’s more than three times as many as the year before.
Nadia Ivashchenko, 28, a railway signal operator from the central Kirovohrad region, said she couldn’t describe a good peace settlement. But her husband has been fighting in the army since Russia invaded in February 2022, and the couple has a 5-year-old son who hasn’t seen his father in years.
“So many people died, and what for?” Ms. Ivashchenko said. “But I want everything to be finished, at least somehow, because I have a son, and I don’t want him to grow up in such a wartime as now.”
In Ukraine, the third year of the war is grueling: The Russians are inching forward every day, and Ukraine has been unable to mount a successful counteroffensive since 2022. The country has been beset by frequent power outages and a growing death toll.
Ongoing support from the West seems unpredictable, especially if Donald J. Trump regains the White House in November. Germany will cut military aid for Ukraine in half if its proposed budget for 2025 is adopted; that is seen as a bellwether for Western commitment, especially after the six-month delay in the United States for a military-aid package delivered this spring.
International pressure is building on Ukraine and Russia to come to some kind of agreement, although experts agree neither side is ready. The barriers to any settlement are huge: Russia occupies about 18 percent of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, according to DeepState, an analytical group with close ties to Ukraine’s army.
In June, President Vladimir Putin said he would order a cease-fire and enter negotiations with Ukraine only if Kyiv withdrew from the regions that Moscow has claimed — but does not yet completely control — and dropped aspirations to join NATO. Ukraine dismissed the proposal as a demand for capitulation; President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he wants Ukraine to return to its 1991 borders and gain a NATO berth.
Russia was not invited to Switzerland in June for the first international peace summit, a 92-country gathering meant to promote Ukraine’s vision for how the war should end. Since then, Ukraine has publicly signaled that Russia should come to the next one, and Mr. Zelensky, in an interview with the BBC, expressed hope for a diplomatic solution.
Ukraine’s foreign minister was in Beijing this month expressing a willingness to have China play a more central role in peace negotiations, and on Wednesday Ukraine invited China’s top diplomat to visit Kyiv.
Russia has so far been noncommittal about participating in a second peace summit. But the Kremlin has also signaled in recent weeks that it could enter negotiations even if Kyiv doesn’t fulfill Mr. Putin’s June demands. Regardless, many Western officials and analysts question whether Mr. Putin is ready to negotiate anything other than a peace deal on his terms.
A key adviser to Mr. Zelensky last week said making a deal now with Mr. Putin was akin to signing “a deal with the devil.” And while the Kyiv Institute poll showed a threefold increase in people willing to give up land for peace, it also found that 55 percent of Ukrainians oppose any territorial concessions whatsoever.
Kateryna Predchenko, Olha’s 85-year-old mother, chastised her daughter for suggesting a deal and thought Ukrainian soldiers should keep fighting.
“It’s not just Ukraine, they protect the whole world,” she said. “Why doesn’t the world want to understand this? We need everyone to rise up against this Russian idiot.”
In the south, one of the regions most affected by the war, the change in attitude over the past year was striking, the Kyiv Institute’s poll showed. More than half of the respondents said they either supported ceding some territory or weren’t quite sure. Only 46 percent said they opposed any concessions. A year ago, 86 percent in this region — encompassing Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Kherson and Odesa — said they opposed giving any territory to Russia.
Mykola, 33, a resident of Odesa, who didn’t want his last name used because he was avoiding the military draft, said he could see ceding the Crimean peninsula, already in Russia’s control, or the area near the city of Luhansk in eastern Donbas as part of a deal. But he added: “As a person who’s sitting home and not fighting on the battlefield, I don’t feel I have any moral right to say how this agreement should look.”
Freezing the lines of battle would leave those in occupied areas, which include the relatives of many Ukrainians, in Russian control indefinitely. And the areas Ukraine has liberated are grim, destroyed by Russian strikes and rife with allegations of human rights abuses.
The sociology institute’s survey did not identify how large concessions should be, whether territory should be officially conceded or whether it should be controlled temporarily by Russia in a less formal way.
“It’s just in general, what’s your emotions?” said Anton Grushetskyi, the institute’s executive director. “And surely, more and more people are ready. And the key reason is the failed expectations from the last year, because lots of people had more hopes.”
He added that many Ukrainians had seen those hopes dashed, particularly because of the delay in U.S. military aid.
For some Ukrainians, their desired deal sounds more like a pipe dream.
“I’d like Russia to go home, stop interfering in our country and deal with their internal problems,” said Oleksandr Melnyk, 26, a car mechanic in the southeastern city of Kryvyi Rih. He said he has submitted his papers to serve in the army. “I’d like them to stop their aggression, pay for the damage, and return all our prisoners and children.”
Many in Ukraine said they were nervous about what the re-election of Mr. Trump might mean. The former president has said he plans to bring a swift end to the war, although he hasn’t specified how. Ukrainians worry that he would cut America’s support or push to allow Russia to keep the territory it now occupies.
Mr. Trump’s inner circle is filled with Ukraine war skeptics, including JD Vance, his pick for vice president, who once said: “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”
But other Ukrainians said that Mr. Trump would at least give Ukraine an answer.
“If Trump comes to power, everything will be clear,” said Natalia Fomenko, 47, who lives in Irpin, one of the Kyiv suburbs ravaged early in the war by the Russians. “Either he will provide Ukraine with weapons, or we will have to agree to negotiate.”
Some Ukrainians on the front lines also said they were skeptical that Russia would actually honor the terms of a peace deal.
“I’d rather believe in the chastity of a prostitute,” said Oleksandr Tsebrii, a soldier of the 58th motorized brigade, in a Facebook video posted on July 15, shortly after Mr. Zelensky publicly suggested Russia could come to the next peace summit. He added: “The only formula for our security and the existence of Ukraine is our resistance.”
Last week, he was killed in heavy fighting in the eastern region of Donetsk.
Anton Troianovski, Andrew Kramer and Dzvinka Pinchuk contributed reporting.
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