What is driving Europe’s pro‑Russian supporters and their stance on the Russo‑Ukrainian conflict? |
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 sparked the most significant military conflict in Europe’s post-Second World War history. While European public opinion is overwhelmingly pro-Ukrainian, significant segments of Europe’s population hold ambivalent or even outright pro-Russian positions. As public support is key to providing military and financial assistance to Ukraine, we wanted to understand why some Europeans are sympathetic to the aggressor.
Our study considers that pro-Kremlin positions could come from four main sources:
We analysed data from two academic surveys from late 2023, spanning nearly 30,000 respondents and eighteen European countries.
The surveys asked respondents whom they considered responsible for the war and whom they wanted to win. In practice, answers to those two questions are strongly correlated, and vary substantially across countries. For example, support for a Russian victory is virtually absent in Poland, but approaches 20% in Slovakia.
Partisan alignment and disinformation
Our statistical analyses........