UKRAINE, Mar 21 — 71,9% of respondents from the east of Ukraine are against the full withdrawal of Ukrainian Armed Forces from Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts, which Russia’s Vladimir Putin stated is one of the terms for peace negotiations. This is the data from the poll conducted by Razumkov Center from Feb 28 to Mar 6, 2025. 

In June 2024, Putin said that he’d agree to peace negotiations if Ukraine would withdraw its forces from Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson Oblasts—regions that Russia has been trying to fully occupy since 2014. This February, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated that Ukraine has to admit that the occupied territories are now Russian for Russia to enter negotiations. 

Razumkov Center’s poll shows that, overall, 78% are against the complete withdrawal of the Ukrainian army from Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions. Only 8% of respondents (6% in western and central regions, 10% in eastern, and 14% in southern) would agree for Ukraine to withdraw its forces from those four oblasts. 

Apart from that, 5% of respondents (2% in western, 3% in central, 6% in eastern, and 15% in southern regions) would agree to international agreements that recognize these four oblasts, plus Crimea and Sevastopol as Russian. 82% of respondents are against this condition. 

Over 22% of respondents are willing, to stop the war, to agree that Ukraine would document neutral, non-aligned, non-nuclear status in its Constitution of Ukraine. The majority (56%) are against this condition. 

At the same time, 7% of respondents would agree that all Western sanctions against Ukraine would be cancelled. 78% of respondents are against it. 

Sociologists state that, based on the poll, the readiness to concede to Russian demand remains virtually unchanged in comparison with June 2024. 

On Mar 11, during negotiations with the USA in Saudi Arabia, Ukraine said it was ready to accept the States’ proposition about a 30-day ceasefire. The American side stated they would inform Russia about that. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy explained that such an agreement would impose a ceasefire not only onto missiles, drones, bombs, and [attacks] from the Black Sea, but also across the entire frontline. 

Right after the conversation between Putin and American President Donald Trump on March 18, Putin supposedly ordered Russian forces to stop shelling Ukraine’s energy structure. But soon after that, Russian troops launched almost 150 drones at Ukraine, hitting energy objects, transport, hospitals, and local infrastructure. 

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