Ukrainians Need (and Want) an End to War

It would be tragic to give up on negotiations now.

Donald Trump’s expressed exasperation over Russia’s continued attacks on Ukraine seemed to temporarily lift the spirit of pro-war European leaders like France’s Emmanuel Macron, who said he hopes Trump’s anger “translates into action.” The US isn’t likely to resume the massive military support it provided under Joe Biden. Under one scenario, however, it could conceivably sell weapons to NATO for Ukraine’s use.

The abandonment of peace efforts in Ukraine would be disastrous—especially for Ukrainians.

Americans’ support for the war has softened somewhat, according to recent Pew polling, with 44 percent saying the US has a responsibility to aid Ukraine’s defense and 52 percent saying it doesn’t. 69 percent, however, still believe the war is “important to US interests.”

They don’t seem to understand the situation in Ukraine, the harm it is causing, the threats it poses to the United States—or the wishes of the Ukrainian people.

What Ukrainians Want

Chances are, most Americans didn’t see last November’s Gallup news report headlined, “Half of Ukrainians Want Quick, Negotiated End to War.” Or the Ukrainian poll which found that only 16 percent of Ukrainians wanted their country to “continue fighting until it wins the war.” This important information went all but unreported in American media.[1]

Their war-weariness is easy to understand. Ukrainians have already suffered more than 400,000 casualties. Two million Ukrainian residences have been destroyed or damaged, and nearly one-fourth of Ukraine’s population has been displaced, including 15 percent who have fled their homeland. Nearly 900,000 Ukrainians (the equivalent of 7 or 8 million Americans) are serving in the military.

Ukrainians are reportedly the poorest people in Europe. Today, one-half of Ukraine’s households reportedly live at a basic subsistence level; roughly one in four must “scrimp” for food. The government’s decimated finances have led to cuts in services, usurious tax hikes, and ever-worsening corruption.

To put it bluntly, they’re living in hell.

The Nuclear Scenario

And speaking of hell: This war also carries the very real risk of the first wartime use of nuclear weapons since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As Germany’s new chancellor has confirmed, all NATO countries have lifted their restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles against Russia. That increases the risk of nuclear confrontation, which was already at an unacceptable level.

The New York Times recently published an investigation which revealed that the United States actively planned, armed, and helped carry out direct military actions against the world’s only other nuclear superpower—actions so reckless they even alarmed US intelligence, which sharply raised its assessment of the nuclear threat.[2]

A War That Can’t Be Won

The Times report should have dominated the news cycle and changed the conversation about this war. It should have—but it didn’t. But then, little attention was paid back in November 2022 when Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared that the war was essentially unwinnable and that it was time to negotiate.

Journalists and war-promoting politicians have collaborated in downplaying both the horrors of this war and the impossibility of Ukrainian victory. That’s allowed the United States and its Western allies to extend this exercise in futility, while offering false hope to the Ukrainian people and expending their own resources on weapons abroad. It’s time to stop claiming we can help Ukraine fight until it “wins.”

It won’t win—not ever. To believe otherwise is to help NATO countries use Ukrainians as cannon fodder.

That’s not to deny that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a war crime. It is, and any decent person should abhor it. But we must also recognize the real-world concerns and provocations[3] that preceded it.

Facing Reality

It was unwise—not to mention criminal—to mark the start of US-Russian negotiations by murdering a top Russian general with a car bomb in a Moscow suburb, an act that appeared to be a deliberate “F— you” to both negotiating parties. Ukraine’s role in that attack—also illegal under international law—was affirmed by Zelensky’s comments afterward[4].

Graham Allison, professor of government at the Harvard Kennedy School, writes:

“Rather than attempting to deny brute facts ... Zelensky should now focus on what he and his brave compatriots have won. They have defeated Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to erase their country from the map. Ukraine’s army has fought the second-most powerful military on Earth to a standstill.”

Allison writes, “Zelensky’s team should make its best efforts to use the few cards that it has left to negotiate an ugly but sustainable peace.”

Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft writes,

“Most of the peace plan for Ukraine now sketched out by the Trump administration is not new, is based on common sense, and has indeed already been tacitly accepted by Kyiv.”

Lieven adds that, given the details yet to be worked out, “it was unwise and thoughtless of Zelensky to declare immediately that ‘there is nothing to talk about here.’”

A Different Future

Ukraine needs and deserves more reassurances than it has been given so far. To be sure, any negotiated outcome will be painful, portending what Allison calls “an ugly but sustainable peace.” But these negotiations are Ukraine’s best hope. They are, in fact, its only hope. The only alternative is an even uglier procession of days, weeks, months, and years containing only death and destruction, with nothing to be gained and no end in sight.

Ukraine can still have a bright future someday, free of war and poverty. One possible future can be glimpsed in Mikhail Gorbachev’s 1989 proposal to the Council of Europe for a “common European home” that “replaces the traditional balance of forces with a balance of interests.”

As long as the war continues, however, Ukraine can’t move forward at all. American citizens and those of other NATO countries have a moral obligation to demand peace—a just peace, but an urgent one. That obligation extends to the many Democrats whose hostility to Donald Trump has deepened a needless partisan divide over this issue.

The United States must lead the West in shifting its focus—and its spending—from war to peace. Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction costs were last estimated at $514 billion over ten years. It’s time to end the suffering of the Ukrainian people, so they can heal and rebuild.

We must help them in that recovery. But first, all Americans—Democrats as well as Republicans—must call for peace now.

---

[1] The Gallup poll represented a dramatic change in Ukrainian public opinion. 73 percent wanted to fight until “victory” in 2022, and 63 percent the year after. By November 2024, 52 percent of Ukrainians wanted to end the war. I only found these polls mentioned once in the New York Times’ news section—a reference to Gallup’s poll in the 23^rdparagraph of a story headlined, “Ukrainians Fear Peace May Strand Them Forever From Lost Homes.” (It also appeared in an op-ed.)

[2] The New York Times’ investigation of the US military in Ukraine is a must-read. It documents the US’ leadership role in planning, arming, and carrying out direct military actions against the world’s only other nuclear superpower.

“Until that moment,” the Times reports, “U.S. intelligence agencies had estimated the chance of Russia’s using nuclear weapons in Ukraine at 5 to 10 percent. Now, they said, if the Russian lines in the south collapsed, the probability was 50 percent.”

Ukraine is also the home of 15 nuclear reactors housed in four power plants.

[3] The Geopolitical Economy website has done an excellent job laying out the United States’ shameful role in provoking conflict between Russia and Ukraine. (See, for example, here, here, and here.)

[4] Zelensky celebrated and took credit for the killing, writing on Telegram that a Ukrainian intelligence official had “ reported on the liquidation of persons from the top command of the Russian armed forces.

Zelensky added: “Justice inevitably is done ... Good results. Thank you for your work.”