In the wake of the failures of Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive to take back any meaningful amount of occupied land from the Russians, optimism among European citizens “seems to have dissipated”, with just ten per cent believing that Kyiv could win the war.
A study from the globalist European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) think tank in which 17,023 people were polled in 12 nations in Europe found that just one in ten believed that Ukraine could achieve a win against Russia, compared to 20 per cent who believe Moscow will be victorious, and 37 per cent who believe that the most likely outcome will be a negotiated peace settlement between the two countries.
The survey, which polled people in Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and Sweden last month, found that just 20 per cent would support increasing European Union aid to Ukraine if the United States reduces its payments to Kyiv.
There is a growing sentiment that rather than doubling down on the war, which even Ukraine’s former top military commander admitted had devolved into essentially a World War One trench warfare situation except where modern drone technology prohibits the surprise attacks needed to break the stalemate.
According to the poll, a majority of citizens in Romania (50 per cent), Italy (52 per cent), Greece (59 per cent), and Hungary (64 per cent) and a plurality in Austria (49 per cent) and Germany (41 per cent) support efforts to “push Ukraine towards negotiating a peace deal with Russia”.
In contrast, only the populations of Poland (47 per cent), Portugal (48 per cent), and Sweden (50 per cent) were more supportive of continuing the war rather than pushing for settlement talks.
The poll once again demonstrated the deep divide between the desires of the people and the leadership in Brussels and European capitals.
The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) even went on to warn that the EU needs to shift towards a policy on Ukraine that is “rooted in reality” or the globalist agenda would serve to validate the arguments from former President Donald Trump and populist leaders in Europe.
“The big danger is that Trump and Putin, who has hinted that he is open to negotiations, try to portray Ukraine and its backers as the ‘forever war’ party while they claim the mantle of ‘peace’,” said Ivan Krastev, one of the ECFR study’s authors. The think tank argued therefore that Brussels should seek to make a distinction between coming to a “durable peace” and a “peace on Russian terms”
“If people see that a Russian victory would involve stopping Kyiv from fulfilling its European aspirations, they can appreciate that this kind of peace would not just be a defeat for Kyiv but one for Europe too,” the study said.
However, the “European aspirations” of Ukraine, namely the desire of Kyiv to join the European Union, may come at odds with citizens throughout the bloc, given that it would open up Europe to another massive wave of migration, with young Ukrainians likely to move to seek better pay in industrial countries such as Germany and Poland, thereby further undercutting the wages of local labour.
Farmers, who have waged disruptive protests over the past month, have also raised objections to the decision by Brussels to allow cheaply produced agriculture to flow into the bloc tariff-free, undermining prices and threatening the businesses of farmers throughout the EU.
The concern over allowing Ukraine into the EU was even bore out by the ECFR’s own poll, which found that “people from Ukraine” were seen as more of a threat than an opportunity in Poland by a measure of 40 per cent to 27 per cent, in Hungary by 37 per cent to 19 per cent, and in Romania by 35 per cent to 13 per cent. Nevertheless, leadership in Brussels, Berlin, and Paris continue to push for fast-tracked admission of Ukraine to further expand the EU’s territory.
The quick admission of Ukraine desired by globalist forces has been stymied by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktór Orban, who has threatened to use his national veto to block the country’s entry into the bloc, citing the potential of the EU being forced into war with Russia over what he sees as geopolitically insignificant territorial disputes between Moscow and Kyiv, as well as the rampant corruption in Ukraine, which under normal circumstances would prohibit membership.
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