Saving lives or freeing territory? Sacred values and tragic trade-offs in wartime Ukraine

President Zelensky has asserted: “We do not trade our lands and our people.” Both territorial integrity and human lives are considered ‘sacred values’ in wartime Ukraine, values beyond cost-benefit and exchange calculations. Yet, the human costs of continuing war to retake territory are so great in Ukraine that these sacred values are forced into a tragic trade-off. Using a survey of frontline Ukrainians from 2022 made up of residents and displaced persons equally (n = 1800), this paper shows that how the ‘lives versus territory’ dilemma divided respondents. We examined the degree to which wartime hatred of the Russian leadership and material insecurity explain people’s choices, and the role that personal stress plays as a mediator for these attitudes. The results reveal that respondents with higher levels of stress were more likely to prioritize saving lives over freeing territory. Displaced persons were also more likely to prioritize lives. The respondent’s material insecurity had modest impacts. For those most stressed during wartime, lives come before land.