While polls show that a growing percentage of Ukraine’s war-weary population is ready to cede territory to Moscow to secure a peace deal, many soldiers and civilians in the country’s eastern Kharkiv region, the theater for some of the bloodiest battles of the war, stoutly oppose the idea.
“How many of my friends and relations have laid their lives down in this war, and for what, then? What would be the point if we gave it up anyway?” asked junior lieutenant “Vadym” pointedly, his boyish traits momentarily hardened by a cold glare. Like many Ukranian soldiers, he goes only by his call name for security reasons.
A few feet away, his friend and subordinate Vitaliy nodded in silent agreement, as droplets of rain ran down the length of his camo jacket. On the morning of December 10, the two soldiers of Ukraine’s 3rd Tank Brigade were awaiting their next mission in a forest of the Kharkiv region, which has been the focus of grinding Russian military advance for months.
The ice-cold downpour that had started early that morning had not let up when we ventured on foot into the forest. The ground beneath our boots was turning into a thick layer of black, treacherous mud that threatened to swallow our shoes and stained everything that it touched.
In early December, as 27-year-old Vadym and the other soldiers taking part in the defense of the Kharkiv oblast were battling both the Russians and the elements, huddled together around a campfire or sheltering in cramped dugouts, an idea was seemingly gaining traction in faraway Western capitals – one that, as demonstrated by Vadym’s blunt answer, would surely poll poorly with the men of the “Iron Brigade.”
For months, a growing number of Western government officials and pundits had been evoking the necessity of offering territorial concessions to Moscow as the only realistic way to reach a peace deal. A grinding war of attrition has left neither side with a significant advantage, while Russian forces occupy roughly a fifth of Ukraine’s sovereign territory in the east and south.
The government of Russian President Vladimir Putin has made clear its determination to hold on to its gains, formally annexing parts of Ukraine under Russian control despite a near-global refusal to recognize the Kremlin’s claims to sovereignty.
While the practicalities of such a deal have remained vague, the idea seems to have made inroads among Ukraine’s war-weary citizenry as well: A recent survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) found that the share of Ukrainians supporting such concessions had risen from 19% in February to 32% in October. Meanwhile, 52% of those polled in a November Gallup poll expressed the desire to see their government negotiate an end to the war as soon as possible.
In the U.S., President-elect Donald Trump — in remarks widely circulated here — claimed on the campaign trail that, if elected, he’d put an end to the fighting “in 24 hours.”
Yet the incoming president has remained uncharacteristically tight-lipped about the contours of the peace agreement he’d help negotiate between Kyiv and Moscow. It has therefore fallen on his pick for vice president, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance – himself a vocal opponent of continued American support to Ukraine – to outline the terms of this prospective deal.
During an interview on the “Shawn Ryan Show,” Mr. Vance stated that such an accord would recognize Russian control over the roughly 18% of occupied Ukrainian territory; provide for the creation of a demilitarized zone along the 600-mile-plus frontline; and, finally, force the government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to offer as-of-yet unspecified “guarantees of neutrality” to the Kremlin while Ukraine would be kept out of NATO.
As outlined, the Trump peace plan looks a lot like a Russian victory, in effect rewarding Moscow’s invasion of its neighbor with significant territorial gains, a permanent land bridge to the occupied Crimean peninsula, and – perhaps most egregious in the eyes of ordinary Ukrainians – a continued say over Kyiv’s foreign policy and choice of alliances.
Yet the Biden’s administration’s overly cautious handling of the war, its drip-feeding of weapons and the restrictions it has imposed on their use on the battlefield have hardly proven more popular in Ukraine, and few Ukrainians still trust Washington to respect its past commitments to defend the besieged country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity to the bitter end.
Ready to fight
Perhaps unsurprisingly then, many Ukrainians categorically reject any peace negotiations with Russia: According to the same Gallup poll, nearly four in 10 Ukrainians (38%) remain steadfast in their belief that Ukraine should keep on fighting until victory, a position shared by many of the civilians and soldiers met over the course of a two-week trip across the Kharkiv oblast.
The sentiment was clear on a December 7 visit to the small village of Dovhenke, located right on the administrative border between the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions.
Drivers exiting the E40 highway are greeted by a lone, fading billboard bearing the name “Dovhenke” that featured pictures of the destroyed settlement and the caption: “Everyone dreams of returning home but unfortunately the village is completely destroyed. Please help us rebuild it.”
Winding up and down barren hills and through desolate, snow-covered fields, the road leading to Dovhenke was lined with ominous warning signs and bits of white and red plastic tape – a reminder that mines and unexploded ammunition still litter the area.
The village – or rather, what is left of it – had hardly changed since an earlier visit in May: Packs of half-starved dogs still roamed the bombed-out streets, although a fine layer of immaculate snow had covered the destroyed houses and abandoned gardens.
In front of Ihor Kniazev’s house around noon, a visiting party is warmly greeted by his father, Anatoliy, 70, who invites the guests in before setting out to find his son, Ihor, out working in the fields. Warm and welcoming, the house itself stood as a testament to Ihor’s absence: Following Dovhenke’s recapture by the Ukrainian army in the fall of 2022, the farmer had rebuilt it himself, using discarded ammunition boxes as walls and soldering artillery shells together for his heating system.
“Not much has changed since you last came, though now the communal electricity is back,” said Ihor, as he sat down for a rare break from working his fields.
Short and spry, with a buzz cut and piercing blue eyes, he tells between sips of black tea that he had now demined 20 hectares of his land by himself, enabling him to grow, harvest and sell potatoes, wheat and other crops.
The conversation quickly turned to the subject of territorial concessions to Russia, an idea which he dismissed out of hand.
“This war was never about territories. What the Russians want is to control our country, our government and to reform a union, like the USSR or the Russian empire before it,” Ihor said. “If we accept to give concessions to the Russians, we won’t be citizens anymore, we’ll end up being slaves.”
After drinking a second shot of Cognac, Anatoliy weighed in: “If we abandon those territories to the Russians, we’ll never get them back,” he sighed.
Debating the peace
The following evening in Kharkiv, the topic of peace negotiations was once again the subject of a lively debate, this time between Oleksiy Taran, his wife Tatyana and their 23-year-old son Denys.
While their living conditions are nowhere near as dire as those of the people in Dovhenke, the residents of Kharkiv – including Oleksiy Taran’s family – are no strangers to the grim realities of war. Located a mere 18 miles from the border with Russia, Ukraine’s second-largest city has been the target of relentless Russian bombing since the first day of the invasion in February 2022.
On a previous visit with Tatyana and Oleksiy Taran back in May, a Russian “glide bomb” had just torn through the cloudless sky and killed one of their neighbors, a bedridden octogenarian. Poorly concealed by a newly erected stone wall, a jumble of twisted metal, corrugated iron and burnt bricks is all that remains of her house.
“I wouldn’t say it’s quiet now, but it’s quieter than when we last saw each other,” Mr. Taran notes as he moves the skewers of meat on the grill. After sitting down at the dinner table, they ponder the growing pressure on Ukraine to try and negotiate a peace deal with Russia.
“What did the Russians do in Chechnya?” Mr. Taran asks. “In the first war, they were beaten. And the second time, they remembered all their mistakes, ignored all the treaties and razed Grozny to the ground.”
Having just brought out from the kitchen a steaming pot of kharcho, a traditional Georgian soup, Tatyana Taran chimes in, “Moreover, they’ll ask for land but they’ve made it clear that they want us to be defenseless, without weapons or allies. What is that for, if not to attack us again once they’ve rebuilt their army?”
Adds Denys Taran: “Everyone in the West is scared of escalation but we’re now battling not only Russia, but North Korean troops and Iranian drones. In short, what Ukraine needs now is nuclear weapons. I’m serious.”
Less than three weeks after that dinner with the Taran family, on Christmas Day, the children of Kharkiv were awakened in the early hours by the wailing of air-raid sirens and explosions. The unlikely “Christmas truce” that Pope Francis had called for in his latest prayer failed to materialize when Russia unleashed drones and missiles against Ukrainian cities and the country’s energy infrastructure.
In Kharkiv alone, 74 buildings were damaged and 840 windows were smashed and entire neighborhoods were left without heat.
Such attacks only strengthen the conviction of many here that any diplomatic deal now on the table amounts to a betrayal of the country’s sacrifices after nearly three years of brutal fighting.
“I can’t give away even a piece of this land, because my grandparents and my parents are buried in it. My granddaughter ran on this land. And she will keep running here,” vowed Serhii, a 55-year-old sergeant within Ukraine’s 113th Territorial Defense Brigade, on a mid-December visit to one of his unit’s artillery positions in the Kharkiv region.
After a bumpy drive through frozen fields and snow-covered dirt roads, the crew, who eagerly shows off “Grandma,” as they had taken to calling their venerable KS-19 100mm anti-aircraft gun. This Soviet-era artillery piece, which they said was captured from the Russians, had first entered service in 1948.
After firing once towards Russian positions, the men invite the group back inside their dugout to wait out potential counterbattery fire.
As the kettle began to boil, Serhii, a stout, jovial man with a thick, greying beard, circled back to the debate over a cease-fire deal.
“If the Ukrainian people are not killed, they will not surrender, they will fight on their native land as long as they have the strength,” he said, his amicable smile seemingly at odds with the seriousness of the matter.
“As long as it will be necessary,” he added as swirls of smoke from his wooden pipe were lazily rising towards the wooden ceiling.
His last words seemed to hang for a moment in the air. The other soldiers inside the cramped dugout remained silent, the stillness only occasionally broken by the muffled cracks of outgoing artillery overhead. No one can force the Ukrainian people to lay down their arms, Serhii argued. Not even Washington.
“When we run out of bullets, we’ll cut them up with knives,” he said, a slight smile on his lips.
• Guillaume Ptak can be reached at gptak@washingtontimes.com.