Moscow:The Kremlin said Thursday that a meeting in the coming days between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump has been agreed on, as a new Gallup poll found that Ukrainians are increasingly eager for a settlement that ends the fight against Russia’s invasion.
Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said the two sides are working on setting up a meeting, and that a venue for the meeting has been agreed on and will be announced later.
A meeting between Putin and Trump would be their first since Trump returned to office this year. It would be a significant milestone in the more than 3-year-old war, though there’s no promise such a meeting would lead to the end of the fighting, since Russia and Ukraine remain far apart on their demands.
Support for continuing the fight wanes in Ukraine
The enthusiasm for a negotiated deal is a sharp reversal from 2022, the year the war began, when Gallup found that about three-quarters of Ukrainians wanted to keep fighting until victory. Now only about one-quarter hold that view, with support for continuing the war declining steadily across all regions and demographic groups.
The findings were based on samples of 1,000 or more respondents ages 15 and older living in Ukraine. Some territories under entrenched Russian control, representing about 10 per cent of the population, were excluded from surveys conducted after 2022 due to lack of access.
Since the start of the full-scale war, Russia’s relentless pounding of urban areas behind the front line has killed more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to the United Nations.
On the 1,000-kilometre front line snaking from northeast to southeast Ukraine, where tens of thousands of troops on both sides have died, Russia’s bigger army is slowly capturing more land.
The poll came out on the eve of US President Donald Trump’s Friday deadline for Russia to stop the killing or face heavy economic sanctions.
In the new Gallup survey, conducted in early July, about 7 in 10 Ukrainians say their country should seek to negotiate a settlement as soon as possible. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last month renewed his offer to meet with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, but his overture was rebuffed as Russia sticks to its demands, and the sides remain far apart.
Most Ukrainians do not expect a lasting peace anytime soon, the poll found. Only about one-quarter say it’s “very” or “somewhat” likely that active fighting will end within the next 12 months, while about 7 in 10 think it’s “somewhat” or “very” unlikely that active fighting will be over in the next year.
Approval of the US falls, approval of Germany rises
Ukrainian views of the American government have cratered over the past few years, while positive views of Germany’s leadership have risen, according to Gallup.
Three years ago, about two-thirds of Ukrainians approved of US leadership. That’s since fallen to 16 per cent in the latest poll, reflecting new tensions between the two countries since Trump took office in January.
But although the dip from last year was substantial, approval of US leadership was 40 per cent in 2024. Positive views of US leadership were already dropping before Trump took office, perhaps related to the antipathy that prominent Republican politicians showed toward billions of dollars in US support for Ukraine.
Germany has grown more popular among Ukrainians over the past few years, rising to 63 per cent approval in the new poll.
Hope for NATO, EU acceptance has fallen
Ukrainians are much less optimistic that their country will be accepted into NATO or the European Union in the next decade than they were just a few years ago.
In the new poll, about one-third of Ukrainians expect that Ukraine will be accepted into NATO within the next 10 years, while about one-quarter think it will take at least 10 years, and one-third believe it will never happen.
That’s down from 2022, when about two-thirds of Ukrainians thought acceptance into NATO would happen in the coming decade and only about 1 in 10 thought it would never happen.
Hope for acceptance into the EU is higher but has also fallen. About half, 52 per cent, of Ukrainians now expect to be part of the EU within the next decade, down from 73 per cent in 2022.
AP
