By Tamar Jacoby
I’ve suspected for months that something was changing in Ukraine. Virtually everyone I had asked since the beginning of the war had maintained that Kyiv could win, with the only acceptable outcome being Russian withdrawal from all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea and the Donbas region controlled by Moscow since 2015. But last winter, you could sense a growing uncertainty, and a few of my friends began to whisper about alternative scenarios.
Two recent polls shed a bright light on these unusually unspoken concerns. One sounding, conducted in May by the Rating Group, found 27 percent of respondents uncertain that Ukraine would succeed in liberating all its lost territory, while 26 percent were willing to negotiate a compromise. Also in May, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) found 32 percent—more than triple the number who agreed a year before—willing to give up “some” territory to “achieve peace and preserve [Ukrainian] independence.”
This doesn’t mean Ukrainians are ready to surrender. KIIS project manager Anton Grushetsky cautions against exaggerating his team’s findings. Given the situation on the ground, he argues, Ukrainians remain remarkably resilient. The fighting on the frontline is all but stalemated; Russian missiles bombard Kyiv and other cities every day. More than three-quarters of the country has lost a close friend or relative, and no one is confident of continued Western support. Still, only 32 percent are considering compromise, while more than half—55 percent—are standing firm, insisting that “no circumstances” could justify conceding territory.
