The Torygraph has been pushing a great deal of “PUTIN STRONK, UKRAINE MUST SURRENDER” shite lately. While I would trust the Torygraph about as far as I could throw it, it did arouse my curiousity as to the general mood of Ukraine towards the current round of negotiations.
While I imagine war exhaustion is high - and I’ve certainly read no shortage of accounts of the suffering of the Ukrainian people and their thoughts on the misery and pointless death the Russian invasion has brought about - does anyone have insight as to the general mood of the civilian population in Ukraine at the moment?
My understanding is that Ukrainians are extremely aware that Putin does not accept anything less than what amounts to Ukrainian surrender. They understand that the “negotiations” are purely a charade that Putin plays only because if he said aloud that he will fight until Ukraine is under Moscow’s rule, the west would flood Ukraine with weapons.
Because they understand this, they don’t really have an opinion on peace negotiations, as they don’t think there are peace negotiations at all. Just like a movie theatre showing Saving Private Ryan doesn’t mean there’s World War 2 going on in that cinema, a group of people acting that there is a peace negotiation doesn’t mean there is one.
So, the Ukrainian sentiments are those of a people who know there’s a war and that there will be a war until one day the west understands Putin’s goals and floods Ukraine with weapons and support in the way it could have done any day already for over three years and could do today or tomorrow, but will probably wait at least until 2026 first.