SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Ukrainians are extremely wary heading into Friday's summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Many fear that they will be asked to make major concessions, and Ukraine won't be in the room while the summit is happening. NPR's Greg Myre is in Ukraine's capital of Kyiv and has been sampling opinion. He joins us now. Hi, Greg.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.
DETROW: What are Ukrainians telling you?
MYRE: Well, I went to Maidan Square in central Kyiv, where there's a sea of Ukrainian flags and photos of fallen soldiers. The recurring theme is that Ukraine is a bystander to this summit and will likely face demands that come out of the meeting. I spoke with Kateryna Tarykina, who's age 32.
KATERYNA TARYKINA: (Speaking Ukrainian).
MYRE: So she says she really wants peace but doesn't think Ukraine should be forced to give away land. Putin wants all of the country, she says, and would just come back in the future to take what he can't get now. Now, she's from Bucha, the Kyiv suburb that was devastated at the start of the war. She's very concerned about her 10-year-old son. She says she copes by living one day at a time because it's just too difficult to think about a war that could carry on for years.
DETROW: Yeah, and that gets to a broader question - how are Ukrainians feeling more broadly not just about what happens Friday, but the state of this war overall and what comes next?
MYRE: Yeah. I had a long talk with Roman Havrysh. He works with a company called Anima. It does online wellness screening so Ukrainians can check their level of stress and anxiety.
ROMAN HAVRYSH: We are exhausted. We want this war to end, but not because we want to stop fighting at any cost.
MYRE: Based on his work and his own impressions, he says Ukrainians are coping better than you might expect, but the war has been so consuming that Ukrainians haven't really thought through how it should end or what the country might look like afterwards.
HAVRYSH: This positive side, that we are coping with war all right, everything is all right. But we don't have a strategy, and that's the biggest drawback.
DETROW: Do we have a sense what public opinion is in the country right now?
MYRE: Yeah. Scott, a couple interesting polls are out this month. A Gallup poll asked Ukrainians if they now favor a negotiated end to the war. And right around 70% say yes. But a poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology asked Ukrainians if they could accept giving up the territory Russia now holds. Seventy-six percent said this is not acceptable. Now, this may sound a little contradictory, but when you speak to people, you see how they can hold both these positions simultaneously. Ukrainians are drained by the war, no doubt about that. The longer it goes on, the more willing they'll be to make some concessions. But most are not at the point where they're ready to give up 20% of their country, which is roughly what Russia controls.
DETROW: I'm curious, did you mean anyone who is willing to give up territory if it means ending the war?
MYRE: Yes. I spoke with Stanyslav Kravtsov. He's 31 and works in technology.
STANYSLAV KRAVTSOV: (Speaking Ukrainian).
MYRE: So he says, "I think we should do it. It's a question of what we will have to pay for this land. Giving up these territories now will cost us less in terms of people's lives. So I think we have to do it." But he also said Ukraine needs security guarantees. This is one thing virtually all Ukrainians agree on, which is the need to permanently end the Russian threat. Remember, this war started 11 years ago with Russia's initial invasion in 2014.
DETROW: That is NPR's Greg Myre joining us from Kyiv. Greg, thanks a lot.
MYRE: Sure thing, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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