LVIV, Ukraine (Reuters) -After losing her son to Russia’s war in Ukraine, Olya Kachmaryk hopes a new U.S.-backed peace plan can finally end the fighting – even if it could mean giving up land he fought for as a soldier.
“The more they (the Russians) come this way, the more they’ll want,” said Kachmaryk, 50, visiting his grave in the western city of Lviv as Russia pushed forward on the battlefield hundreds of miles to the east.
Her son Oleksandr is among the more than 1,000 fallen troops buried in a quiet corner of Lychakiv Cemetery, where officials say only a handful of spaces remain as casualties mount from nearly four years of war.
On a recent afternoon, a thick sea of blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags fluttered in the frigid air as mourners bade farewell to another fighter – one of the last burials as authorities rush to prepare a new cemetery nearby.
SCALE OF LOSS ‘REALLY STRIKING’
Ukraine is under pressure from the Trump administration to accept an agreement that could force Kyiv into painful concessions, such as ceding an eastern region it still partly controls, where Russian forces are advancing slowly.
In a sombre address last week, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned his country faced its most difficult moment yet, but said he would not betray Ukraine’s interests by signing a bad deal.
Oksana Rymaruk, 25, whose husband was killed in June and is buried at Lychakiv, said she was in favour of negotiations to end the war as soon as possible.
“Let them do what it takes for our kids to be able to run around on free land – and to freely visit their fathers’ and mothers’ graves,” she said.
Rymaruk, holding her 1-1/2-year-old child swathed in a puffy white jacket, said the scale of losses on display at Lychakiv was “really striking.”
‘WHAT DID MY SON DIE FOR?’
Local officials have selected a new location to accommodate future casualties. Earlier this week, workers were clearing the vacant plot circled by tall trees amid the din of excavators.
Despite Ukraine’s staggering losses – numbering in the tens of thousands of dead – a narrow majority of Ukrainians still rejects territorial concessions, according to a recent poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
On Thursday, Zelenskiy’s top aide and chief negotiator Andriy Yermak told the Atlantic magazine that “no one should count on us giving up territory”.
Standing with her back to long rows of graves, 68-year-old Antonina Ryshko, who lost her son Marian, 41, said there was “no way” Ukraine should surrender any more land.
“What did my son die for?” she asked.
Dismissing the peace deal currently on the table, Ryshko added: “Let them rewrite it.”
(Writing by Dan Peleschuk in Kyiv; Editing by Conor Humphries)
Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.
Photos You Should See – Nov. 2025