Author, Evgeny Kanevsky
Place of work, BBC
Published 5 minutes ago
Reading time: 7 min
Amid increasingly brutal Russian attacks on Ukraine, a public debate has unfolded in the country, with some politicians calling for difficult compromises with Russia and others responding that no amount of concessions will force Vladimir Putin to abandon the idea of completely subjugating Ukraine.
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Scary statistics from early October
Conversations about political processes and moods in Ukrainian society cannot be started without remembering the terrible news of the last two days and the general state of affairs in the war.
On Thursday, in the city of Kramatorsk, Donetsk region, a Russian bomb exploded near a public transport stop, killing at least 33 people, and completely burning two regular buses with passengers.
Over the course of Wednesday and Thursday in Kyiv, seven people were killed and about 30 were injured as a result of various attacks.
And on Wednesday night, a Russian missile destroyed a five-story residential building in Priluki (Chernihiv region), killing 22 people, including five children; another 54 residents were injured.
Before this, throughout September, Russia did not stop shelling Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, including with the help of jet drones, which are difficult for Ukrainian air defense to cope with.
Moscow also again began to destroy the Ukrainian energy infrastructure - before the onset of the first cold weather, emergency and rolling power outages resumed in the country.
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In addition, as BBC correspondent Paul Adams reports on our website, over the past year the Russian military has sharply increased the number of attacks on Ukrainian trains: according to the Ukrzaliznytsia company, in September alone, passenger trains were evacuated due to Russian drones 5,831 times.
All this is happening against the backdrop of relative stability on the front line. Judging by the available data, Russian troops, although slowly and with heavy losses, are advancing in some areas.
At the same time, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are launching several local counter-offensives; including, as they say in Kyiv, during Operation Vivaldi in the north of the Donetsk region they managed to liberate about 180 sq km of territory and capture 250 Russians.
Ukraine is also making successful strikes against targets deep inside Russia. On Thursday it became known about the defeat of the Yandex data center in the Ryazan region; This week, Ukrainian unmanned combat boats set fire to an oil tanker near Sochi, and attacks on leading Russian oil refineries continue.
Meanwhile, attempts by the administration of US President Donald Trump to organize a peace process have not yet led to any results.
On Wednesday, the head of the White House promised to speak with Vladimir Putin by phone again, reminding him that he was celebrating his birthday. But as of Thursday afternoon, there were no reports of the conversation, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Trump had not yet congratulated Putin.
It is not very clear whether this fact should be given at least some significance, given that the leaders of the two countries talk to each other constantly, but in reality this does not change anything, despite Trump’s very optimistic statements about the parties’ readiness for peace.
Discussions about peace against the backdrop of war
Everything described above leads us to the conclusion that Russia’s war against Ukraine is on the path of escalation and the prospects for peace are now quite distant. But over the past two weeks, a lively debate has continued in Ukrainian society about whether peace is possible in the near future - and on what terms.
Its beginning can be considered a column by the former commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valeriy Zaluzhny, the current ambassador of Ukraine to the UK and, judging by polls, the most popular politician in the country.
His main message was criticism of the “business logic” in negotiations to end the war (as demonstrated by Trump and his special representatives), but many in Ukraine also noticed other words from Zaluzhny - that Ukraine must demonstrate strength, and any agreements with Russia do not make much sense.
“If the world order no longer works, then it is logical that international law, which should be the basis (even of the negotiation process), is absent,” writes Zaluzhny. “Then you and I understand for sure that in the absence of such a right, any agreements are a prelude to the next war, the beginning of which is only a matter of time.”
Zaluzhny responded to the mayor of Kharkov, Igor Terekhov, who stated that “Ukraine must strengthen its defense and at the same time seek a path to peace that will protect it from a new attack.”
Terekhov, in fact, opposed the idea that Zaluzhny and his like-minded people have been talking about for many years: Ukraine should become a fortress country modeled on Israel, where everyone, without exception, works for defense and is always ready to defend the state. “People have the right to a life where they can plan for tomorrow. Constant survival cannot be the norm that Ukraine must come to terms with,” wrote the mayor of Kharkov.
But the biggest resonance in Ukraine was caused by the statements of Verkhovna Rada deputy Alexei Goncharenko, who until recently was a member of the faction of the opposition party “European Solidarity” (it is headed by ex-President Petro Poroshenko).
In early October, Goncharenko wrote on his social networks that Ukraine was “losing the war,” “losing a huge number of people,” and it “doesn’t have its own money, not just to pay for the war, but even for the existence of the country.” “Let’s agree on everything,” he suggested. “We’ll agree to stop attacks on ports.” We will agree to stop attacks on enterprises. Let’s agree to stop attacks on schools.”
Goncharenko noted that “agreeing means making concessions to each other,” and published a “peace plan” according to which Ukraine can abandon sanctions against Russia “in exchange for stopping any long-range strikes, unblocking the Black Sea and limiting hostilities to the frontline in the Donbass.” He also suggested thinking about Ukraine’s abandonment of its desire to join NATO, changing language laws in favor of the Russian language and allowing the UOC associated with the Moscow Patriarchate..
At the same time, Daniil Getmantsev, a member of the pro-presidential Servant of the People party, who heads the Rada Committee on Finance, said that the majority of Ukrainians “support negotiations and peace on difficult terms, but those that will ensure an end to the war forever, at least stopping a new world redistribution on our territory and the lives of our people.”
Many Ukrainian politicians, political scientists and journalists reacted angrily to Goncharenko’s words, many of whom accused the deputy of spreading pro-Russian narratives.
Over the weekend, journalists asked Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky about Goncharenko's proposals. “The interests of our state cannot be surrendered under any circumstances. You cannot bend to Putin and Russia, because Ukraine will be broken,” Zelensky replied. “We must do everything to not give Putin a single chance,” he continued. - Believe me - oh, you see, it still works! Let's beat them some more. You see, they have already begun to crumble.”
Already on Monday, the European Solidarity faction expelled Goncharenko, saying that his position contradicts the principles of the party, which “do not depend on the political situation and cannot be the subject of bargaining either in Ukraine itself, much less in negotiations with Russia.”
Opponents of Goncharenko’s statements insist that no compromises on the part of Ukraine will lead to a real end to the war.
“The discussion that arose around the next batch of “peacekeeping” statements by Alexei Goncharenko would make sense if Russia really offered us some real terms of a truce or was interested in at least some kind of negotiation process,” writes famous Ukrainian journalist Vitaly Portnikov. “But that’s exactly what doesn’t happen.” “Putin continues the war not because he is pushing us to negotiate, but because he wants to destroy us.”
The director of the Ukrainian Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Igor Semivolos, formulates this idea even more categorically: “You cannot come to an agreement with something that believes that you do not exist.”
However, Ukrainian publicist Valery Pekar notes that “Goncharenko’s speech became a bomb because it sounded in oppressive silence.” “None of the leading politicians or senior government officials did anything to develop a public dialogue about the political goal of the war, about the strategy of victory, about the red lines of possible agreements, about the geopolitical position of Ukraine in a changed world,” writes Pekar.
What does sociology say?
Explaining the need for negotiations with Russia, Goncharenko and his supporters say that such a scenario is supported by the absolute majority of the Ukrainian population. Judging by the latest data, Ukrainians are indeed in favor of negotiations, but still do not believe that unconditional concessions will lead to lasting peace.
At the beginning of October, the Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) published a study according to which 75% of respondents “accept” negotiations.
The share of Ukrainians surveyed who clearly believe in Ukraine’s victory has decreased this fall: in mid-September there were 47% of such people, and at the end of July - 60%.
And one more very important part of the KIIS survey: 62% of those surveyed in September of this year said that they were ready to endure the war as long as necessary (23% expressed their readiness to endure for several months or six months, while the rest could not decide).
It is noteworthy that, judging by KIIS data, during the entire war, the number of Ukrainians ready to endure war never fell below 48% (this figure was recorded in April 2026).
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