Support for Ukraine among Europeans remains broad, but nearly two years after the full-scale invasion, barely 10% now believe it can defeat Russia, according to an EU-wide survey, with some form of “compromise settlement” seen as the most likely end point, Report informs, citing the Guardian.
The shift in sentiment—this time last year, more Europeans than not said Ukraine must regain all its lost territory—will demand that politicians take a more “realistic” approach that focuses on defining what an acceptable peace must actually mean, the report’s authors argue.
“In order to make the case for continued European support for Ukraine, EU leaders will need to change how they talk about the war,” said co-author Mark Leonard of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), which commissioned the polling.
The January polls in 12 EU member states, including France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Sweden, found that Ukraine’s stalled counteroffensive, growing fears of a US policy shift, and the prospect of a second US presidential term for Donald Trump were fueling pessimism about the war’s outcome.
The report, Wars and Elections: How European leaders can maintain public support for Ukraine, found that only one in 10 Europeans across the 12 countries surveyed believed Ukraine would win on the battlefield, while twice as many (20%) predicted a Russian victory. Even in the most optimistic member states surveyed—Poland, Sweden, and Portugal—fewer than one in five (17%) believed Kyiv could prevail.
In all countries, the polling showed, the most common opinion, shared by an average of 37% of respondents, was that the war would end in a compromise settlement, although some countries were keener on that outcome than others.