“I am against giving up those parts of the Donetsk region that we still hold,” said Rzhavskyi, 44, a native of the eastern industrial heartland now struggling to protect from Russian attack.
Under the original proposal, Rzhavskyi would lay down his arms: the Donbass, comprising fiercely contested Donetsk and Russian-controlled Luhansk, would be recognized as de facto Russian.
“Of course, for me this is a painful topic, because all this is happening in my homeland,” Rzhavskyi, who commands a drone unit, said by phone.
Rzhavskyi, a businessman before the war, said four years at the front since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion have destroyed his health. If there is peace, he said, he would focus on recovery and his two children, ages 5 and 14.
But he said he would like to hear a clear explanation from military leaders about why Ukraine’s military should abandon the positions it still holds, including in his native Donetsk.
“If it comes without explanation, it won’t happen,” he said. “It is not the leaders of the State who are sitting in the trenches. It is our boys who are in the trenches. They have the right to decide,” he added.
As negotiations continue, kyiv’s forces are being pressured in several directions, with Russian forces infiltrating and using drones to cut off logistical routes, said Mykola Bielieskov, a military analyst and researcher at the National Institute for Strategic Studies.
Things are difficult but not critical for Ukraine, Bielieskov said, adding that its defensive lines were not collapsing despite dire warnings from the United States.
Bielieskov questioned the logic that Ukraine should rush to a deal now before losing more territory, arguing that the cost to Russia of having to capture that land could help stabilize the situation. “It is much worse when we make unilateral concessions and withdraw from the Donetsk region, but Russia retains its potential and can now threaten neighboring regions,” he said.
In one of those regions, Oleksandr, a lieutenant in Ukraine’s special forces fighting in the south, said he and his fellow soldiers were closely following developments surrounding the peace plan. The situation where he is was not as difficult as in the east. The Russians are so desperate to take the Donbass, he said, that they are pulling their troops out of the south for that task.
Oleksandr, who did not want his last name revealed due to the nature of his service, said in audio messages sent on WhatsApp that he also rejected many of the key points of the plan.
“No one will make concessions on the size of the army, because it is our guarantee of security,” said Oleksandr, 43, referring to the proposed 600,000-strong limit for Ukraine’s army.
“No one will make concessions on the territories, because it is our land and we are here.”
There is a strong consensus among Ukrainians that land concessions that Russia does not control are unacceptable, Bielieskov said.
Asking soldiers “who risked their lives and lost their comrades to stop the Russian offensive” to now abandon the positions they still hold in Donetsk would probably not be well received, he added. “I won’t speculate on how people will behave if there is an order to leave, but it clearly won’t be taken positively.”
Ukraine should not be rushed into signing a peace agreement that amounts to capitulation, Oleksandr said.
A father of two, he ran a small cocktail bar in central kyiv before volunteering to join the army in 2022. But he said he was not yet thinking about returning to a peaceful life. “If we don’t stop them now, our children will have to do this and we can’t let this happen.”
Junior Lieutenant Oleh Zontov has been through war twice. served in the east against Moscow-backed separatists in 2014 and has fought the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion since 2022.
For Zontov, 58, the fact that there is “some” peace plan in place is good news.
Zontov, who served as part of an airborne assault unit in Donetsk before moving to a more civilian-focused role, said that when there is peace, he would love to return to life as head of the communications department of an investment firm in kyiv.
He said judging the peace proposal was difficult given that the objectives around what would constitute a victory have changed depending on Ukraine’s fortunes on the battlefield: from a last-ditch strategy to survive to an attempt to reclaim all of its territory.
“Today, victory would probably mean stopping the enemy where they are now and keeping them in these positions,” he said in a telephone interview, echoing the official position of Ukraine and its allies that a ceasefire should begin on the current front lines.
Abandoning Ukrainian-controlled territories like Donetsk would be “a very controversial decision” that would cause outrage and negativity within the military, he said.
Lt. Dmytro Melnyk serves as a drone operator in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, where he said the Russians were pressing and Moscow’s superiority in numbers and ammunition was difficult to overcome. In audio messages sent on WhatsApp, Melnyk said his team was technically inferior. “The Russians are not better warriors than us. There are simply too few of us,” Melnyk said.
kyiv has struggled to recruit enough troops and has been dogged by growing reports of desertions as the war drags on, one reason some analysts believe it should consider a deal, even a punitive one.
Deep down, Melnyk said, he harbored hopes for peace after years of fighting.
“Things are getting scarier and scarier every day,” said Melnyk, 46, a professional para-athlete who competed in the Paris Paralympic Games last summer after earning a battlefield license. He said he dreams of returning to his wife, Tetiana, and two daughters in Dnipro, where he could return to training or become a school teacher.
“At the beginning of the war, we were like ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ and that’s not the case anymore. Obviously, I won’t stop until the war is over, but my soul is broken,” Melnyk said, although he maintained that the peace plan was an unacceptable demand for his country’s capitulation.
“I won’t hide it. There is a constant fear of dying,” Melnyk added.
Daryna Mayer reported from Kyiv and Yuliya Talmazan from London.
