There is little appetite in Ukraine and Russia for major concessions, according to a U.S. firm’s analysis of online posts. But a minority of Russians want to keep fighting until Ukraine’s president is overthrown.
An analysis made this week of Russian attitudes toward a possible cease-fire with Ukraine suggests that the Russian public is ready to end the war but skeptical of any concessions Moscow may have to make.
Combined with new polling in Ukraine, the analysis by a Massachusetts-based company, FilterLabs, shows how difficult selling the terms of a U.S.-brokered peace settlement will be to both the Russian and Ukrainian public.
While the two countries are war-weary, there is little appetite for major concessions to either government’s war aims — such as Russia’s demands for territorial concessions or Ukraine’s desire to integrate with the West.
“As with all things Ukraine/Russia-related, the picture is complicated, though from the borderlands to the big cities, one through line exists: Russians feel it’s time to end the war, but on Russia’s terms,” the company found in its analysis.
In a phone call with President Trump on Wednesday, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, agreed to pause attacks on energy targets as long as Russia did the same. The Trump administration sees the limited agreement as a step to a broader cease-fire.
FilterLabs, which scrapes social media and internet posts to measure public sentiment in Russia and other parts of the world, has been analyzing the shifts in Russian attitudes toward the war since President Vladimir V. Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.