Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy took another concrete step towards launching ceasefire talks with Russia by saying he might call for a referendum on the issue of making territorial concessions to Russia ahead of planned negotiations this autumn.

Zelensky told Le Monde that accepting territorial losses would be a very difficult decision and suggested he might put it to a referendum. He also admitted that giving up land to bring an end to the war would constitute a victory for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Giving up Ukrainian territories is 'a very, very difficult' question,” Zelenskiy told the French newspaper.

Zelenskiy’s comments on a referendum follow on from a similar call for a referendum by Kyiv Vitaly Klitschko, who said in a recent interview at the end of July that Zelenskiy “risks political suicide” if he tries to give away Ukrainian territory to Russia as part of a deal to end the fighting.

"The next few months will be very difficult for Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Should he continue the war with new deaths and destruction, or consider a territorial compromise with Putin?" Klitschko said during an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. "How can we explain to the country that we need to give up pieces of our territory that cost the lives of thousands of our fighting heroes? Whatever move he makes, our president risks political suicide."

"Zelenskiy will probably need to resort to a referendum. I don't think he can reach such painful and important agreements on his own without popular legitimisation," Klitschko added.

Commentators warn that Zelenskiy's biggest political problem is the threat of protests or insurrection by fractions on the far-right or nationalists, who will not accept defeat or territorial concessions. A referendum would give him some political cover should he make this very unpopular decision.

The idea of a referendum is being discussed as Ukrainians become increasingly tired of the war and support for the start of ceasefire talks is growing slowly in the polls, although the majority of the people still back a continuation of the war and reject making territorial concessions. At the same time, support for Zelenskiy remains high, but his approval ratings are also sinking slowly in the polls.

A poll from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace suggests that the share of Ukrainians open to a negotiated settlement has dramatically risen over the past year to June, and, if present trends hold, will become a majority-held view before the end of this year. Support for the war has fallen from a 2022 high of 70% following a successful counter-offensive to 48% in the summer of 2023 following the failure of the second counter-offensive, according to Gallup. The share of Ukrainians that say ceasefire talks should start now has risen to 44% as of June.

The changing sentiments and growing exhaustion was epitomised in a recent controversial interview with prominent Ukrainian philosopher Andrei Baumeister, published by Meduza, who represents the views of a growing minority that believes his country has “turned into a totalitarian state” and has already been destroyed by the war.

 

Ceasefire on the horizon

As bne IntelliNews reported, Ukraine is inching towards a ceasefire as pressure mounts on Bankova. After a disastrous six-month hiatus in US aid, after the US ran out of money for Ukraine in January, that has seen almost the entire non-nuclear power generation capacity destroyed by Russian missiles, the aid is flowing again as the first F-16s arrive, but it may be too little, too late.

Following the failure of the Swiss peace summit held on June 16-17, with neither China nor Russia, Zelenskiy has called for a second peace summit to be held in November to which both China and Russia will be invited. China is believed to be key to the talks as the only country with significant leverage over Russia. Chinese President Xi Jinping has recently been repeatedly calling for a negotiated end to hostilities as Beijing seeks to reduce geopolitical tensions and avoid bringing down sanctions on itself.

The West has no war goals other than to put Kyiv in the “strongest possible position ahead of eventual peace talks,” the White House has said on multiple occasions.

A month after the war started the Istanbul peace deal was successfully concluded between Ukraine and Russia that would have ended the war, but that deal was shot down by former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who told Zelenskiy that the West was not prepared to offer genuine security guarantees that were a core part of the agreement with Russia.

Russia took the military initiative after the fall of Avdiivka on February 17 and then launched an intense barrage in March after Ukraine ran out of air defence missiles. More recently, Russia introduced massive 3-tonne FAB glide bombs at the start of summer against which Ukraine has little defence. Zelenskiy recently reported that Russia is dropping some 800 of these bombs a week. And with half the power sector reduced to rubble, Ukraine is looking at a long cold and dark winter.

“This is indeed the worst moment for Ukraine to enter peace talks and Putin will try to squeeze out of it as much as he can, raising stakes at every turn. Of course, he will reject Nato membership right away – he started the war because of it. Yet, there won’t be a better moment as things stand now,” says journalist and bne IntelliNews columnist Leonid Ragozin.

 

Baumeister

Meduza recently interviewed Baumeister, a political philosopher and one of Ukraine’s leading public intellectuals, who has been unusually negative in his take on the war and has caused controversy in Ukraine. In his YouTube videos, he regularly, and often quite harshly, criticises Bankova’s decisions. Moreover, he believes that during the Russian invasion Ukraine has gone from democracy to totalitarianism. Meduza special correspondent Elizaveta Antonova quizzed Baumeister on his unpopular views, which have gained more traction in recent months and set a context for the growing calls for a ceasefire.

“Nobody knows [how the war will end]. But Ukraine cannot defeat Russia on the battlefield. Everything is moving towards territorial losses,” Baumeister said. “However, it seems to me that Russia will also face very serious consequences after territorial acquisitions, which will be presented to Russians as a “victory”. The country will lose the opportunity to be innovative, modern, the one that is oriented towards. Everyone will lose: both Ukraine and Russia.”

Baumeister also addressed the difficult problem of where the funding for Ukraine’s reconstruction will come from after the war ends. Nearly $500bn worth of damage has been done to Ukraine’s economy, according to World Bank estimates, but after seizing the Central Bank of Russia (CBR)’s frozen assets has now been ruled out, analysts estimate that Ukraine can count on only some $75bn in international aid to pay for reconstruction.

“It will be impossible to rebuild Ukraine. It is clear that there will be some donors, tenders, corruption scandals, embezzlement of money, they will build something and show that they have built some district of the city – in Kharkov, in Dnepr, somewhere else – but you will not rebuild the climate, the atmosphere,” said Baumeister. “Many will not return to Ukraine, and these are millions of people. Many will leave if they are allowed to do so – I mean men. And for a country with a sharply reduced population without prospects for serious economic, intellectual, cultural development, if the war drags on, the chances of establishing itself as a modern state are fading.”

Baumeister’s gloomy prognosis tallies with a recent UN report that forecasts Ukraine’s population will fall from the current official estimate of 34mn, down from the pre-war peak of 45mn, to a mere 15mn by 2100.

With these challenges ahead, Zelenskiy has his work cut out to bring peace to the country and rebuild following the destruction Russia has wrought on Ukraine.