Gallup released a new poll on Thursday that found 69% of Ukrainians favor a negotiated end to the war with Russia as soon as possible, while just 24% want to keep fighting until “victory,” a near complete reversal of public opinion from when Russia invaded more than three years ago.
When Gallup first asked the question to Ukrainians in 2022, it found 72% wanted to continue fighting and just 22% wanted a negotiated settlement. As the war progressed, the number of Ukrainians who favored a peace deal increased, and it became a majority for the first time when Gallup released a poll in November 2024, finding that 52% wanted negotiations to end the conflict.
While the majority of Ukrainians want to see the war end, the new Gallup poll found that they don’t think it will happen anytime soon. Just one quarter of respondents think it’s likely the fighting will end within 12 months, while 68% believe peace is unlikely.
The poll also found that Ukrainians have a significantly less favorable view of the US since the early days of the war. Just 16% of Ukrainians approve of the performance of US leadership compared with 66% in 2022. But the majority of Ukrainians, 70%, still believe the US needs to play a role in peace talks.
The new poll comes as President Trump appears to be making a new push for peace as he is set to hold a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the coming days. But there’s been no indication that Russia and Ukraine are any closer to agreeing to terms to end the fighting.
Russia’s main demands to end the war include Ukrainian neutrality and the recognition of the four oblasts Moscow annexed in 2022 as Russian territory, which would require a Ukrainian withdrawal from the territory it still controls in those areas. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hasn’t shown any signs that he’s willing to concede the territory as long as the US and NATO continue to support his war effort.
Negotiations that Russia and Ukraine held earlier this year marked the first peace talks since the early days of the war, which took place in March and April of 2022. At the time, Russia’s main demand was for Ukrainian neutrality. Those efforts were discouraged by the Biden administration, and later that year, Russia declared its annexation of four Ukrainian oblasts and added the recognition of that territory as part of Russia to its demands to end the war.
