The demand for negotiations with Russia belonged for a long time to the taboo sphere. But the bloodier the toll the war took, the more often one could hear in Ukrainian kitchens that they could let go of that Donbas and Crimea already, that we had lost too many people, that the cost of the war was too high.
This text has been auto-translated from Polish.
A thousand days since the outbreak of full-scale war, Kyiv is finding it hard to hide its fatigue. Workers at restaurants, pharmacies and stores have already taken generators out onto the streets - after Sunday's shelling, electricity began to run out. The whirr of diesel engines carries through the streets, as it does every winter. They allow the city to live, but they make noise and stink. They annoy passersby already sleep-deprived by nighttime air alarms. More and more veterans can be seen in the metropolitan crowd - many of whom lost a leg or an arm in the war. Some salute them, others, embarrassed, look away.
A Kyiv cafe is arguing over this morning's trial of Sergei Gnezdilov, an activist and soldier who left his unit to protest injustice: a million men are fighting with no prospect of demobilization, while five million are not, and the state is not dealing with it. He has been charged with desertion, and the court has just extended his detention. The evening will bring a new topic of contention: a new Gallup Institute survey. It shows that already more than half of Ukrainians (52 percent) want the war to end as soon as possible.
In the first two years of the war, this was a very unpopular opinion. Most Ukrainians believed that Ukraine should fight until victory. Their percentage is declining, with 38 percent of those surveyed now holding this view. The survey was conducted in August and October.
Negotiations with Russia - which may or may not involve territorial losses - have long been taboo. But the bloodier the toll the war took, the more often one could hear in Ukrainian kitchens that they could let go of that Donbas and Crimea already, that we had lost too many people, that the cost of the war was too high. Words of this kind rarely came from the mouths of opinionated elites - journalists, writers, activists. And certainly not spoken in public.
This has begun to change in recent months. Sociologists indicate that this has been influenced by the attitude of President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has begun to publicly hint at "negotiations," thus legitimizing the previously discredited as defeatist belief that the war could end in anything other than a military victory for Ukraine. And although, according to a survey, belief in victory on the battlefield was declared by 66 percent of Ukrainians in June, there is growing evidence that this is wishful thinking. The situation at the front is not encouraging, the army is short of men, and the West is helping to an extent that is not even enough to maintain the status quo. The Russians are slowly but steadily advancing.
Surveys also show that the South and East, which are fired upon almost daily, are more likely to negotiate and make any concessions, the relatively peaceful West much less so. Civilians were asked for their opinions, as soldiers cannot be surveyed. One often hears the opinion that it should be up to them to make the monstrously difficult decision about the future of the war. But in the military, too - inferring from endless Facebook discussions - opinions are divided.
Kiev is tired, but that doesn't change the fact that it still vibrates. Since I was last here, in April, quite a few new cafes, bookstores have opened in the city, you can even go for a cruise - during the day, as there is a curfew at night. The Ukrainian state is still working, and Ukrainian civil society - who knows if not the most active and persistent in modern world history - is adapting to the changing situation. Every now and then one hears about new projects. Among other things, it has recently succeeded in forcing the Defense Ministry to make it easier for soldiers to transfer to another unit (using the Army+ application), creating a drone assembly in a civilian kitchen and platform that facilitates recycling of war debris.
An engaged section of society is less likely to allow any negotiations with Russia. Some accuse the metropolitan bubble that this is because it has not stained its hands with blood, but this is only partially true. Yes, the uneducated from smaller centers and those who cannot afford bribes were thrown into the war in the first place. However, in the face of shortages, the military is now coming for the elite as well. And its male and female representatives not infrequently volunteered for it.
Also, it is not that insisting on fighting to full victory is a testament to being unglued from reality. After all, it's not just a matter of patriotic stubbornness and a sense of three years lost. The arguments against starting negotiations are strong. You don't negotiate with terrorists," proclaims one of them, "because you give them a finger, they'll take your whole hand. Besides, what guarantee does Ukraine have that giving up some territories to Putin in exchange for a ceasefire will be respected? The experience of the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015 leads one to believe that none.
Without increased military assistance from its allies, Ukraine has no good choice. It will either bleed out, or risk a pause that could end up even worse for it (and its allies). Discussing the future of the war in the current realities is a choice between the plague and the cholera.
