Should Ukraine settle war with Russia? Poll finds shift in American opinion from 2024

A large majority of Americans want Ukraine to make a peace deal with Russia, according to a new poll, which comes as the war between the two countries enters its third year.

In the latest Harvard Center for American Political Studies-Harris poll, 72% of respondents said Ukraine should negotiate a settlement with Russia, while just 28% of respondents said they want Ukraine to keep fighting to win the war.

The results mark a significant shift from an October poll, which found opinions were more divided, with 54% of respondents saying they want a settlement and 46% saying they want Ukraine to continue fighting.

The latest survey — conducted with 2,443 registered voters between Feb. 19 and 20 — also found strong support for President Donald Trump opening negotiations with Russia.

Sixty percent of respondents said they favored Trump announcing direct talks between the U.S. and Russia to end the war. Meanwhile, 40% said they were opposed, according to the poll, which has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

The first round of diplomatic discussions were held in Saudi Arabia in mid-February, and Trump said in a Feb. 24 post on Truth Social that “talks are proceeding very well.”

However, most voters took issue with how the negotiations have gone down and with some of the terms that Trump officials have discussed.

Fifty-nine percent said they were opposed to Ukraine’s leaders being left out of the U.S.-Russia dialogue, while 41% were in favor. And 55% said they were against European leaders being sidelined from the negotiations, while 45% were in favor.

Additionally, 57% said they were opposed to Trump administration officials “forcing Ukraine to make territorial concessions in order to end the war.” Meanwhile, 43% said they were in favor of this.

During the recent talks with Russia, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said concessions would need to be made by both sides, according to The Associated Press. And, in remarks on Feb. 12, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Ukraine reclaiming all of its lost territory would be unrealistic.

Two-thirds of respondents also said that, should Ukraine make concessions to Russia, it should be given security guarantees from the U.S., while 34% said they were opposed.

Trump officials, though, have been wary of committing to U.S.-backed guarantees.

“To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be U.S. troops deployed to Ukraine,” Hegseth said, adding that Europe should take the lead on providing security.

By a 61%-39% margin, respondents said they were in favor of post-war U.S. security being “contingent on Ukraine paying back for billions in U.S. military support by sharing revenue from Ukrainian rare earth elements 50/50 in the future.”

Trump said on Feb. 22 that his administration was “pretty close” to hammering out a deal with Ukraine, which would involve sharing earnings from minerals mined in Ukraine, according to Reuters.

The poll also found that 63% of respondents believe Russia “will advance onto other countries” if it successfully claims Ukrainian territory. Thirty-seven percent said territorial concessions will not embolden Russia to attack other countries.

The poll comes on the three-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began on Feb. 24, 2022. Since then, an estimated 1 million Ukrainians and Russians have been killed or wounded, according to a September Wall Street Journal report.

This story was originally published February 25, 2025 at 9:20 AM with the headline "Should Ukraine settle war with Russia? Poll finds shift in American opinion from 2024."