Since his return to office in late January, U.S. President Donald Trump has made clear he wants to end the war in Ukraine as quickly as he can, irrespective of what that means for Ukrainians. Breaking with the West’s years-long isolation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump spoke on the phone for 90 minutes with the Russian leader without informing Ukraine or European allies beforehand. Then, in mid-February, Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, held preliminary talks with his Russian counterpart in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, without including representatives from Kyiv. 

Trump has meanwhile labeled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator” and, inexplicably, blamed Ukraine for starting the war that began with Russia’s seizure of Crimea and parts of Donbas in 2014 and vastly expanded in February 2022 with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “I’ve had very good talks with Putin, and I’ve not had such good talks with Ukraine,” Trump said on February 21. The message is clear. Washington is moving to end the war on its and Russia’s terms, no matter what Ukrainians think.

Trump’s strategy to sideline Ukraine in peace negotiations with Russia not only violates basic international norms of diplomacy, but is also strategically mistaken. Washington may have leverage over Kyiv, since ending U.S. military assistance would greatly impede the country’s ability to fight. But the Trump administration cannot simply command Ukraine to lay down its arms. If Trump forces Zelensky into a settlement that is wildly out of step with Ukrainian preferences, it risks falling apart soon after being signed. The views of the Ukrainian people are also critical for the moral and legal legitimacy of any negotiated settlement. After all, it is Ukrainians who are fighting to defend their country and who are dying on the battlefield.

The crucial question, then, is whether Ukrainians are prepared to make concessions to end the war. In the first year after Russia’s full-scale invasion, the answer was clearly no. In July 2022, we conducted a survey of 1,160 Ukrainians to test whether they would make concessions to Russia if it would save Ukrainian lives and reduce the risk of a nuclear attack. We found, across the board, that they would not. When asked whether they would choose to compromise Ukraine’s autonomy from Russia or cede territory to Russia to reduce the costs of the war, they overwhelmingly dismissed those options, preferring resistance at any cost.

In December 2024 and January 2025, we repeated our earlier survey. The new results, which we have presented in full in a working paper, show that allowing Russia to control Ukraine’s government remains a redline that Ukrainians refuse to cross. Yet, Ukrainians have become slightly more willing to entertain other concessions. Some, for instance, appear open to leaving Crimea in Russian hands in exchange for minimizing civilian and military casualties. Others would consider forswearing NATO membership. Some are even willing to cede parts of Donbas. These findings suggest that Ukrainians might be more prepared to accept concessions to limit the costs of the war than they were in July 2022.

Still, Trump’s current rapprochement with Moscow is unlikely to produce an agreement that is tolerable to Ukrainians. The U.S. President has embraced Russian narratives about the war and prematurely endorsed Russian demands before any negotiations have taken place, suggesting that a U.S. deal would be lopsided toward the Kremlin; he has, for example, already ruled out a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders and Ukrainian membership in NATO. The United States also sided with Russia twice at the United Nations on February 24, the third anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine: First by opposing a resolution that condemns Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and then by drafting and voting for a UN Security Council resolution that calls for an end to the war without acknowledging the Russian aggression.

As our new survey shows, Ukrainians are not so fatigued by war that they will simply fall in line with imperious great-power demands. They still prefer to resist Russian control over their country at any cost and most still oppose territorial concessions. If forced into a deal that does not forestall an outcome in which Ukrainians “may be Russian someday,” as Trump stated on February 11, they may find a way to continue fighting—perhaps with increased European support—even if Washington ceases military assistance to Kyiv. Trump would thus fail in his promise to Americans to stop the “horrible, very bloody war.” Instead, he will make the United States look weak while rewarding Russian aggression and endangering more lives in Ukraine and beyond.

LAND FOR PEACE?

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many Western commentators have called on the Ukrainian government to cede territory or autonomy to end the war. Russian troops had barely crossed Ukraine’s border in February 2022 when many U.S. and European strategists and scholars, along with world leaders, declared that the country did not stand a chance against its much larger eastern neighbor. After Ukraine surprised the world and successfully defeated Russia’s attempt to take Kyiv, many then pressed it to pursue a settlement during talks in Istanbul that March. Although the chorus calling for a peace deal diminished when Ukrainians successfully fought back, it never died down entirely. Since the summer of 2023, the push for a settlement has again grown as Ukraine’s efforts to regain more territory have stalled. To some observers, the war’s relentless cost in lives, its continued damage to the Ukrainian and the global economy, and the risk it poses of provoking nuclear escalation by Russia are reasons to end it as soon as possible.

These calls for a settlement may have a point, on ethical grounds. Just war theory demands that a defensive war must have a reasonable chance of succeeding. Even when a war is based on a just cause, such as self-defense, the war may become morally impermissible if the expected costs significantly exceed the achievable benefits—for instance, if resistance cannot ultimately stop the aggressor. But whether at this point Ukraine’s self-defense has a reasonable chance of success remains uncertain. There is also no clear answer to what would constitute “excessive” costs when weighing the ongoing loss of Ukrainian lives against the goal of preserving autonomy from Russian control. Since it is Ukrainians who primarily bear these costs, their preferences must be paramount. Our new survey shows that they will refuse to settle if the deal in question opens the door to Russian control of their country.

In both our 2022 and 2024-25 surveys, we did not ask Ukrainians whether they supported talks in general, as such a question is vague and loaded. Instead, we put them in their government’s position by asking them to consider specific tradeoffs. Respondents were shown pairs of various strategies to pursue over the next three months. Each would entail a course of the war with different territorial, political, and nuclear consequences, as well as additional civilian and military casualties. Some strategies involved continuing to fight to regain all of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea and Donetsk and Luhansk oblasti, some called for fighting to regain everything except Crimea, and others implied the forfeiture of both Crimea and Donetsk and Luhansk. In some scenarios, Ukraine would retain full political autonomy, in others it would become a neutral state between NATO and Russia, or even become controlled by Russia in its domestic and international affairs.

Some strategies produced, over the next three months, half as many civilian and military deaths as occurred during the first three months after Russia’s 2022 invasion (6,000), others led to the same number (12,000), and still others produced twice as many (24,000). Some strategies reduced the risk of a Russian nuclear strike in Ukraine to zero, others put it at five percent, and others at ten percent. Respondents then had to choose between the strategies they were shown. Critically, the survey only offered options that had a base level of plausibility. The respondents thus had to make tough decisions by weighing the costs and benefits of continuing the war against Russia, just as their government would.

In the July 2022 survey, the findings were unambiguous. Respondents almost uniformly preferred courses of action that preserved Ukraine’s political autonomy and allowed it to restore its 1991 borders, even if concessions on either of these would have considerably reduced civilian deaths, military fatalities, and nuclear risks. Ukrainians, in other words, rejected compromise. As Zelensky said in March 2022, “we will continue fighting for our land, whatever the cost.”

Now, after three full years of brutal combat, Ukrainians appear slightly more open to compromise to end the war. Some respondents, for example, are no longer opposed to forgoing Ukrainian membership in NATO and the EU. In 2022, for example, respondents were 48 percent less likely to choose negotiated neutrality over full political autonomy, even if accepting neutrality significantly reduced or ended the cost in human lives and the risk of nuclear escalation by Russia. By contrast, in the new survey, respondents were only 36 percent less likely to choose negotiated neutrality, when offered the same contrasts in costs.

Ukrainians seem also slightly more open to forfeiting Crimea and Luhansk/Donetsk to reduce the costs of war. In 2022, when presented with strategies that came with varying costs, respondents on average chose to keep fighting for full territorial integrity 67 percent of the time. Only in 33 percent of the cases were they willing to cede Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk—mostly to avoid making political concessions to Russia, but sometimes to reduce fatalities and the risk of a nuclear attack by Russia. Now, they express a preference for fighting for full territorial integrity in 63 percent of the cases; in 37 percent of the cases, they opt to give up Crimea and Donetsk/Luhansk. Importantly, many respondents choose to make territorial concessions to avoid compromising Ukraine’s political autonomy. Once the issue of political autonomy is taken off the table and the only benefit to ceding the territories is reducing the costs of the war, Ukrainians are more likely to want to keep fighting: 70 percent in this scenario say they prefer preserving full territorial integrity, whereas just 30 percent choose to limit the costs of war.

Ukrainians still prefer to resist Russian control over their country at any cost.

The biggest changes in Ukrainian attitudes concern Crimea. In 2022, Ukrainians expressed a strong willingness to fight for the peninsula, irrespective of the costs. Strategies that preserved Ukraine’s full territorial integrity at varying costs were selected 66 percent of the time, whereas those that led the Ukrainian government to cede Crimea in exchange for lower costs or the preservation of political autonomy were chosen in just 34 percent of the cases. Now, Ukrainians opt for strategies that preserve full territorial integrity in 59 percent of the time and are willing to give up Crimea 41 percent of the time, in order to reduce the costs of war or prevent Russia from taking political control of Ukraine. While this suggests greater openness to territorial concessions, the effect of having to give up Crimea is still more than twice as large as that of increasing the risk of a nuclear attack. When given a choice between strategies that have no risk of nuclear strikes and those that have a ten percent chance, they choose the no-risk option only slightly more than half (54 percent) of the time, choosing high-risk options nearly as often.

Overall, most Ukrainians surveyed in our 2024-25 study were still remarkably prepared to bear high costs for continuing to defend their state. When presented with strategies that would quadruple the number of Ukrainian military fatalities over the next three months, from 6,000 to 24,000, for example, respondents selected those costly options 43 percent of the time—suggesting that the rise in fatalities had relatively little effect on their choices, in contrast to having to make political or territorial concessions.

 Most importantly, Ukrainians remain categorically opposed to any strategy that ends with Russian control over their government. When participants were given a choice between an outcome that led to Russian dominance and one that resulted in full political autonomy, 77 percent chose full autonomy, even if it came at very high cost. This has changed little since 2022, when 81 percent of them did. In the instances when respondents accepted Russian control, they generally did so to pick a strategy that restored Ukraine’s full territorial integrity with its pre-2014 borders. High civilian casualties, military casualties, and nuclear risks had little effect on their choices.

AMERICA’S MISCALCULATION

The reasons to care about how Ukrainians think about the conflict should be self-evident. Ukraine’s people should, at an absolute minimum, get a say in their own future. Allowing an aggressor to walk away with the spoils of war also violates international law. Any deal that forces Ukraine to transfer sovereign Ukrainian territory to Russia as a result of Russian or U.S. coercion (or both) would lack the force of law. The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, of which the United States is a signatory, considers any treaties that violate the prohibition on aggression to be null and void. Moreover, all states have a duty not to recognize territorial claims based on the illegal use of force. Even if Ukraine consented to such a deal, it is far from obvious that this would satisfy international law. Nonetheless, states might be more willing to ignore the legal problems with such a settlement—whether doing so is a good idea or not—if it reflects the preferences of the Ukrainian people.

Judging from his statements and his proposed actions, Trump appears to care little about international law or ethics. But his administration should understand that ignoring Ukrainians’ wishes could have major strategic costs to the United States. Ukrainians are open enough to concessions that Trump might be able to forge some kind of agreement, or at least make progress toward one, by including the country’s leadership in the negotiations and engaging with its concerns. But so far, Trump has treated Zelensky as a secondary player, at best. In doing so, he has set his peace effort on a failing course. Without Zelensky’s input, a deal is more likely to cross Ukrainian red lines, with the result that Ukraine and its people will reject it and opt to fight on no matter what Washington says.

If Trump forces Zelensky to agree to his and Russia’s terms, Ukrainians will likely withdraw the considerable trust they still have in their president—according to a February survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 63 percent of Ukrainians approve of Zelensky. The country will eventually go to the polls and might then select a new leader prepared to openly resist the forced deal. Although Ukrainian elections are one of Putin and Trump’s central demands, they might be Ukrainians’ best insurance against their leader bowing to an imposed settlement.

Indeed, even if Moscow were to control Kyiv, a possibility that Ukraine has already demonstrated would be extremely difficult, it might not put a stop to the war. In a follow-up experiment in our 2024-25 survey, we drastically increased the number of projected military fatalities up to 160,000 and the risk of Russian nuclear escalation up to 45 percent. Yet, even then, Ukrainians’ opposition to Russian control and major political or territorial concessions was no weaker than it was in the options described above. The strength and durability of their preference to keep fighting suggests that a forced peace on Russian terms might well incite popular resistance in Ukraine and a long, grinding insurgency against foreign rule by Russia—as the experience of other conquered or occupied peoples such as the Irish resistance to British rule, Algerian resistance to French rule, or Tibetan resistance to Chinese rule, makes clear.

Such continued resistance would certainly frustrate Trump, who claimed during the presidential campaign that he could end the war in Ukraine “within 24 hours.” It might also frustrate Western analysts who have argued that Ukraine will have no choice but to support a deal. Under the banner of realism, for example, the political scientist John Mearsheimer has argued that “Ukrainians do not have much choice but to accommodate the Russians to a large extent.”

However, our new survey shows that Ukrainians themselves are realists. For example, 61 percent think that NATO membership is unlikely to be part of a peace deal. They understand their geopolitical constraints, and they are willing to make difficult decisions. They also understand, better than any outside observers, the costs of giving Russia political influence over their country. When Ukrainians make clear that they categorically and uniformly reject Russian control—three years into a brutal war that has destroyed many of their towns, killed tens of thousands of their fellow citizens, and uprooted millions more—the West should listen. It means that a deal in which Ukrainians “may be Russian someday” will not in fact end the war. After all, there is nothing “realist” about forcing 39 million people into a rump state frantically forged in the furnace of great-power politics.

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