As Russia's advance in Ukraine accelerates, support for negotiations in the country grows
Strengthening internal resilience will buy Zelenskyy some time, but longer-term challenges remain.
By Tetyana Malyarenko and Stefan Wolff
The war in Ukraine is at a critical juncture. Kyiv is now able to use of western-supplied ATACMs and Storm Shadow missiles against targets inside Russia — and did so with strikes against Russian military facilities in the Bryansk region on November 19, 2024, and a day later in the Kursk region. Moscow’s response to the strikes was twofold. First, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, approved changes to his country’s nuclear doctrine, which lower the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons and now include situations where a non-nuclear country that is backed by a nuclear power attacks Russia. Second, Russia launched a new type of intermediate-range ballistic missile — Oreshnik, or Hazel Tree — at an arms factory in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.
This – so far carefully calibrated and choreographed — tit-for-tat indicates a further, gradual escalation of the war effort by both sides ahead of the inauguration of Donald Trump who has repeatedly committed himself to ending the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. It has been accompanied by a steady advance of Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, now at a much-accelerated pace, and a continuation of the Kremlin’s efforts to cause maximum damage to Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, which have also intensified of late. At the same time, Ukraine’s European allies are struggling to maintain their unified front of broad support beyond the top-5 defence spenders and to remain relevant in any Trump-brokered negotiations, as well as scepticism from the likes of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and a decidedly right-ward, pro-Russian shift in the first round of Romania’s presidential elections.
That the war has taken a toll on Ukraine is undeniable: six million refugees and an additional four million people internally displaced in Ukraine, increasing levels of poverty and food insecurity, estimated and growing reconstruction costs of nearly $500 billion, and a conservative estimate of at least 12,000 dead and almost 30,000 injured civilians. This is in addition to over 30,000 Ukrainian servicemen killed in the first two years of the war alone, with countless more wounded and missing.
Unsurprisingly, Ukraine as a country has been exhausted by 1,000 days of war. And this has been evident also in several recent Gallup polls, published on successive days after November 19, the 1,000th day since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The results of the public opinion survey make for interesting reading at a time when there is general agreement on the need for an end to the war but far less on the terms of a possible agreement and its risks.
More than half of Ukrainians polled by Gallup (52%) think that “Ukraine should seek to negotiate an ending to the war as soon as possible” while only 38% want the country to “continue fighting until it wins the war”. This is a remarkable shift compared to a year ago, when 63% wanted to continue fighting and 27% were in favour of negotiations, and even more so in comparison to 2022 when support for a continuation of fighting stood at 73% and for negotiations at 22%. Importantly, more than half of those supporting negotiations are also “open to making some territorial concessions as a part of a peace deal to end the war.”
This suggests that the odds for public support for a Trump-brokered deal among Ukrainians are improving. However, this happens at a time when Ukrainians’ confidence in their government is declining and scepticism of its western partners is growing. In 2022, 60% of Ukrainians expressed trust in their government, one year later it was 49%, and in 2024 levels dropped to just 28%. By contrast, banks (92%) and the military (62%) still enjoy overwhelming public confidence.
Regarding their western partners, fewer Ukrainians now think that the country will quickly join NATO and the EU. While still more than half of those polled consider membership in both organisations likely within the next ten years, the number of those who think it will never happen has dramatically increased over the past two years — from 12% to 22% for NATO and from 6% to 15% for the EU. Ukrainians’ approval of American leadership has declined rapidly — from 66% in 2022 to 40% in 2024 — while it has remained steadily around 50% for Germany. Those Ukrainians in favour of negotiations are keener for the EU (70%) and UK (63%) to play a role in any peace deal than the US with 19% saying that they do not want a Trump presidency to have any role at all.
As a sign of the shifting mood in Ukraine, the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has talked more about an end to the war recently. He expressed confidence that the election of Donald Trump would bring the war to an more quickly and emphasised his determination to “do everything possible to end the war next year through talks.”
But this does not mean that Ukrainians and their leaders are ready yet to settle on terms that Trump might propose and Putin would accept. On the contrary, there is little evidence that Ukraine is ready to give up on key elements of its peace and victory plans — most notably the aim of recovering all Russian-occupied territories and NATO membership as part of a package of credible security guarantees.
Yet, realising that he needs to tread a fine line between his established vision of peace and victory and the growing pressure to search for an acceptable compromise, Zelenskyy has floated a third plan: the internal resilience plan.
By appealing to Ukrainians' sense of unity and committing human and financial resources to stabilising the front lines, strengthening the country's defence industrial sector and recognising the sacrifices of servicemen and war veterans, the resilience plan lays the foundations for keeping Ukraine in the fight against Russia. While less ambitious than the earlier victory plan, this is a strategy to aimed at creating the domestic conditions for Ukraine to survive — at least until acceptable ceasefire terms are on the table.
As such, the resilience plan also sends a clear message to Ukrainian domestic and international audiences that under Zelenskyy’s leadership the maximum goals enshrined in the idea of a just and lasting peace will continue to guide his government’s policies in the long term, but without completely ruling out shorter-term compromises that may be necessary because of a diplomatic push by Trump, a worsening situation at the front, and weakening European resolve — or any combination thereof.
By recommitting the country to his victory plan, Zelenskyy’s resilience plan lays the foundations for continuing Ukrainian resistance to what are essentially Russian terms of unconditional surrender. It also sends a clear message to Ukrainian domestic and international audiences that under Zelenskyy’s leadership the maximum goals enshrined in the idea of a just and lasting peace will continue to guide his government’s policies.
Playing for more time is a rational strategy for Zelenskyy — not only because of the uncertainty how the next two months before Trump’s inauguration will play out but also because peace negotiations with Russia now would carry a greater risk of internal destabilisation and a direct challenge to Zelenskyy’s rule.
Compared to over 40% in central and western regions, support for continued fighting is below 30% in the regions closest to the frontline — Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhya and Kharkiv. But people living there are generally less inclined to participate in anti-government protests and more likely to emigrate. They may have facilitated Zelenskyy’s victory in the 2019 presidential elections — on a campaign platform for peace with Russia — but were unable or unwilling to prevent him from aligning with the hawks when war veterans, civil society activists, officials and members of the Ukrainian diaspora put pressure on him to prevent the implementation of the Minsk agreements.
Zelenskyy’s potential realignment with the doves would likely also create an opening for a serious political challenge from his predecessor, former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko. Poroshenko has strongly supported a no-surrender stance as leader of leader of the European Solidarity opposition in Ukraine’s parliament and through his Poroshenko Foundation which claims to have “provided assistance to more than 200 military units” in the form of weapons and equipment.
Thus, the rational strategy for Zelenskyy is to buy time. Confronted by internal hawks and an uncertain and volatile external environment, the Ukrainian president is leaning into the opportunity created by the relaxation of western constraints on strikes against Russia and is preparing the country for more sacrifices. As far as it goes, this strategy makes sense in the short term, despite its inherent risks. The challenge for Zelenskyy and Ukraine in the long term remains the same — how to manage a sustainable transition from war to peace in the face of American pressure, Russian demands, and weakening European unity.
An earlier version of this article was published by The Conversation on 25 November 2024.
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