Ukrainians I met in Kyiv and Lviv were grimly realistic about the end of the war. We should follow their example

The next time a breathless news anchor talks about the prospect of a war-ending “deal”, with Ukraine “ceding land for peace”, I want to sit them down with Adeline. In Lviv last week, Adeline showed me on her phone map her lost home in Russian-occupied Nova Kakhovka, just across the Dnipro River from the Ukrainian-liberated territory around Kherson. Look, she said, with tears welling up in her eyes, here on this satellite snapshot you can see the ecological disaster that followed Russia’s destruction of the Kakhovka dam in 2023. And here’s the place where she dreamed of setting up a small art gallery. “Why should I give up on my home?” she cried. Why indeed.

The territory occupied by Russia is the size of Portugal and Slovenia combined. It’s difficult to get accurate figures, but perhaps some 5 million people live there, while at least another 2 million refugees from those territories are now elsewhere. Inside the occupied territories, Ukrainians face brutal repression and systematic Russification. Outside, refugees like Adeline are left with only their memories, old photographs and the keys to lost homes. We should not whitewash this monstrous ongoing crime of occupation with the soothing words “land for peace”.

Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist