LONDON, June 30. /TASS/. Ukrainian officials are increasingly calling for a cease-fire in private conversations with Western leaders, Gideon Rachman said in a column he contributed to the Financial Times.

"A year or two ago, such calls would have been regarded as defeatism. Now they are made with increasing insistence in closed-door meetings between Ukrainian and western leaders," the story says.

According to Rachman, without a clear strategy, "a sense of hopelessness risks descending over the country." In his opinion, "if the growing pessimism among those following the Ukraine war closely is justified, then any feel-good sentiments generated by the NATO summit may soon disappear."