A divide opens in Ukraine over giving up land for peace

Below the bombed university building in east Ukraine where she once worked, Olga Borodich conceded she would be ready to give up Ukrainian territory to end the war with Russia.

The Kremlin's forces have carved a path of destruction towards Pokrovsk, the logistics hub and garrison city, that she calls home.

Civilians are fleeing en masse and she has had enough.

More than anything her family and her neighbours want peace, the 64-year-old said, even if that meant surrendering land to Moscow.

"I think it's the right decision," she said.

Then came the caveat -- the concessions could never include her hometown.

"No. Pokrovsk can only be Ukrainian. What will happen if the Russians are here? Nothing good. A Russian flag here? Never," she told AFP.

Borodich's quandary points to a growing divide among Ukrainians exhausted after two and a half brutal years of warfare and whose staunch opposition to territorial concessions has been waning.

Polls conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology show there is a growing readiness to concede territory if that would end the war that has cost tens of thousands of lives -- 32 percent of respondents voiced support in May, up from 26 in February.

Across key points of the precarious front line in the Donetsk region, several residents told AFP they would be ready to live under the Russian flag if it meant peace.

Discussions of a land swap have grown louder after Ukraine's shock offensive in the Russian border region of Kursk that has seen Ukraine claim swathes of territory.

- 'Need to be realistic' -

The likelihood that land concessions could be raised at future negotiations looks likely also given Ukrainian struggles to reclaim territory captured by Russia.

"I think we need to be realistic here about what Ukraine can achieve militarily because of equipment limitations, manpower limitations and materiel limitations," said Franz-Stefan Gady, a military analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly said Ukraine would never give up land.

In an interview with French media including AFP last month however he said some territories could be returned through diplomacy and that any possible decision on concessions would have to be decided by the Ukrainian people.

"It's a complicated issue," he said.

An absolute majority of Ukrainians, the polling shows, are still against capitulating to Kremlin demands to surrender land, although that figure is being whittled away.

Moscow annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and several months after invading in February 2022, it claimed to incorporate four more territories into Russia -- including Donetsk.

Putin has demanded that Ukrainian forces surrender those four territories as a precondition for any ceasefire or broader negotiations.

Some Western officials concede behind closed doors that Ukraine will likely have to give up land in any peace deal, but they almost all stick to the line that it is up to Kyiv to decide the terms for negotiations.

- 'So many killed. So much blood' -

Black smoke from a recent Russian strike billowed over Svitlana apple's trees as she conceded that it didn't matter who controlled her frontline town in the Donetsk region, so long as she got a decent night's sleep.

"It would be very painful, of course," the 71-year-old told AFP in the mining town of Novogrodivka on condition her full name not be used.

"But even if the Russians come, I'll know that I'm on my Ukrainian land in my own bed," she said in a pink night gown, kissing a cross hanging from a necklace.

But another town resident, Iryna Cherednychenko, baulked at the suggestion.

"So many losses. So many killed. So much blood. For what? To give up territories and sit at the negotiating table now?" the 62-year-old said wide-eyed.

Her sentiment was echoed at a field hospital for wounded soldiers nearby, where the sounds of incoming and outgoing artillery fire echoed in the night sky.

A military doctor from western Ukraine said many soldiers in his brigade hailed from territory under Russian control.

"How would we explain to these people that they are now giving up their well-being and lives, and we will give up their homes, their flats, their houses and their cities?"

"Giving up territories is not an option," the 26-year-old, who identified himself as Lyubystok told AFP.

- 'Ukraine must exist' -

Even if more Ukrainians drop their objections -- and even if such a proposal were on the table -- giving up land would not necessarily or immediately halt the war, analysts say.

"The idea that territorial concessions could lead to peace is quite simplistic," said Marie Dumoulin, a former French diplomat and director of the wider Europe programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

"Some people accept the notion that it may be needed at some point to end the war, but it's not the key to ending the war," she said.

"What will make a durable settlement is not whether Ukraine concedes territories or not, but whether there are deterrents to ensure Russia does not attack again," she added.

That is precisely what worried Cherednychenko in Novogrodivka.

"Russia will not stop. Putin will not stop. Tomorrow they'll gather strength and attack again because they have no interest in the existence of Ukraine as an independent state," she said.

"Yes, we want the war to end, but the state of Ukraine must exist."