This public vs. private split goes back a ways. When the eastern regions split off in 2014, many Ukrainian political figures took the public stance of recoverin

This public vs. private split goes back a ways. When the eastern regions split off in 2014, many Ukrainian political figures took the public stance of recovering those regions at all cost, while privately admitting they were glad to see them go. From a British political scientist who interviewed them: So...We can imagine that the Ukrainian leadership will continue to voice support for regaining the occupied territories, but not try very hard to actually bring it about. In interviews conducted in Kyiv in the summer of 2018, several elites asserted that while Ukraine cannot declare a policy of surrendering the territory, recent changes in law and in practice indicate a de facto policy of stabilizing the status quo rather than trying to reverse it. (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0888325418791020 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/08883254187910...)