“I am against giving up those parts of Donetsk region that we still hold,” said Rzhavskyi, 44, who hails from the eastern industrial heartland he is now fighting to protect from Russia’s assault.

Under the original proposal, Rzhavskyi would lay down his weapon — the Donbas, comprising fiercely contested Donetsk and Russia-controlled Luhansk, would be recognized as de facto Russian.

“Of course, for me this is a painful issue, because all of this is happening in my homeland,” Rzhavskyi, who commands a drone unit, said on the phone.

Rzhavskyi, an entrepreneur before the war, said four years on the front lines since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion have destroyed his health. If there is peace, he said, he would focus on recovery and his two sons, ages 5 and 14.

But he said he would want to hear a clear explanation from military leadership about why Ukraine’s army should abandon positions that it still holds, including in his native Donetsk.

“If it comes without an explanation, it will not be carried out,” he said. “It is not the state leadership sitting in the trenches. It is our boys in the trenches. They have the right to decide,” he added.

As negotiations continue, Kyiv’s forces are being squeezed in a number of directions, with Russian forces infiltrating and using drones to cut off logistical routes, said Mykola Bielieskov, a military analyst and research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies.

Things are hard but not critical for Ukraine, Bielieskov said, adding that its defensive lines were not collapsing despite dire warnings from the United States.

Bielieskov questioned the logic that Ukraine should rush into a deal now before it loses more territory, arguing that the cost to Russia of having to capture that land could help stabilize the situation. “It’s much worse when we make unilateral concessions and withdraw from the Donetsk region, but Russia retains potential and can now threaten neighboring regions,” he said.

In one of those regions, Oleksandr, a lieutenant with Ukraine’s special forces fighting in the south, said that he and his fellow soldiers were carefully following developments around the peace plan. The situation where he is stationed was not as difficult as in the east. Russians are so desperate to take the Donbas, he said, that they are draining their troops from the south for the task.

Oleksandr, who did not want his last name revealed due to the nature of his service, said in audio messages sent on WhatsApp that he also rejected many of the plan’s key points.

“Nobody will make concessions on the size of the military, because it’s our security guarantee,” said Oleksandr, 43, referring to the proposed 600,000-strong cap on Ukraine’s military.

“Nobody will make concessions on the territories, because it’s our land and we stand here.”

There is a strong consensus among Ukrainians that concessions of land that Russia does not control are unacceptable, Bielieskov said.

Asking soldiers “who risked their lives and lost their comrades to slow down the Russian offensive” to now abandon positions they still hold in Donetsk is not likely to go down well, he added. “I won’t speculate on how people will behave if there is an order to leave, but clearly it won’t be taken positively.”

Ukraine shouldn’t be rushed into a peace agreement that amounts to capitulation, Oleksandr said.

A father of two, he ran a small cocktail bar in central Kyiv before he volunteered to join the army in 2022. But he said he wasn’t thinking about returning to a peaceful life yet. “If we don’t stop them now, then our children will have to do this, and we can’t let this happen.”

Junior Lt. Oleh Zontov has been through the war twice. He served in the east against Moscow-backed separatists in 2014, and has battled the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion since 2022.

For Zontov, 58, the fact there is “some” peace plan in the works is good news.

Zontov, who served as part of an airborne assault unit in Donetsk before moving to a more civilian-focused role, said when there is peace, he would love to return to life as head of the communications department at an investment company in Kyiv.

He said judging the peace proposal was hard given that the goalposts around what would constitute a victory have shifted based on Ukraine’s battlefield fortunes — from a last-ditch stand for survival to a bid to reclaim all its territory.

“Today, victory would probably mean stopping the enemy where it is now and holding it at these positions,” he said in a phone interview, echoing the official stance of Ukraine and its allies that a ceasefire should begin at the current front lines.

Abandoning Ukrainian-controlled territories like Donetsk would be “a very controversial decision” that would cause outrage and negativity within the military, he said.

Lt. Dmytro Melnyk is serving as a drone operator in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, where he said the Russians were pressing forward and Moscow’s superiority in numbers and ammunition was hard to overcome. In audio messages sent on WhatsApp, Melnyk said his equipment was technically inferior. “The Russians are not better warriors than us. There are just so few of us,” Melnyk said.

Kyiv has struggled to recruit enough soldiers and been dogged by growing reports of desertion as the war has dragged on, one reason some analysts feel it should consider a deal, even a punitive one.

Deep inside, Melnyk said, he harbored hope for peace after years of fighting.

“Things are getting more and more scary every day,” said Melnyk, 46, a professional para athlete who competed at the Paris Paralympics last summer after getting battlefield leave. He said he dreams of returning to his wife, Tetiana, and their two daughters in Dnipro, where he could return to coaching or become a schoolteacher.

“At the beginning of the war, we were like ‘Go, go, go,’ and it’s not the case anymore. Obviously, I won’t stop until the war is done, but my soul is torn,” Melnyk said, though he maintained the peace plan was an unacceptable demand for his country’s capitulation.

“I won’t hide it. There is a constant fear of dying,” Melnyk added.

Daryna Mayer reported from Kyiv, and Yuliya Talmazan from London.