Stopped on the streets of Lviv, a middle-aged man in a black windbreaker opened up about Ukraine’s prospects for peace.

“I would rather live in a smaller Ukraine, but in a happier and safer one,” he told a local TV reporter in the western city.

If Ukraine is to end the war in 2025, it will probably have to sacrifice portions of its territory. Moscow occupies parts of the eastern Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions and has demanded their entirety in any ceasefire agreement.

On the back foot across the front, Ukraine has little chance of evicting Russia’s forces.

“I ask myself this question all the time and I can’t answer it,” the Lviv resident said, reflecting on the dilemma now facing president Volodymyr Zelensky.

“Those territories, it seems to me, have moved away from us so much psychologically that they have become non-Ukrainian,” he said before being struck by doubt: “Maybe so, maybe they were waiting for us to return.”

Throughout the country, such talk is in the air.