Listening to the daily thud of artillery hitting nearby towns, a school principal in southern Ukraine appealed to parents for donations for a new bomb shelter.
A soldier and his girlfriend gave up hope that the war against Russia would end soon, and decided to get engaged, despite not having any idea when he might come home.
A woman, depressed for months about the instability, decided to stop worrying and just imagine that peace would come next spring, maybe, along with the flower blossoms.
“I felt so helpless,” said the woman, Tetyana Kuksa, who works at a market in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. “I am dreaming it will stop.”
With Ukraine’s army stalled in trenches along the front line and a sense that weaponry from allies arrived too late and will now begin to dwindle, Ukrainians are increasingly pessimistic over prospects for a quick victory, polling and interviews show. Hopefulness, a linchpin of Ukraine’s fight against a much more powerful foe, has been dented.
The result is a nation preparing, with a sort of sober resignation, for life with war as a constant, and no end in sight.
It is a trend, not a waving of the white flag. The vast majority of Ukrainians remain defiant, support President Volodymyr Zelensky and trust their military. The spirit that drove Ukrainian bartenders, truck drivers and university professors to enlist in the army after Russia invaded in February 2022 is still evident daily.
But recent polling shows that it has faded by several measures.
Readiness for a negotiated settlement with Russia has increased in a small but still significant way for the first time since the invasion began, polling and focus group studies show, rising to 14 percent from 10 percent, though the vast majority of Ukrainians still staunchly reject trading territory for peace.
Ukrainians were most hopeful, polls indicated, last winter, in the run-up to the counteroffensive in the south. Trust in all institutions other than the army has since dropped, according to a…