"Was Putin really going to start a war with Ukraine?" he asked. One ex senior minister suggested to me that there was a generational divide between those who had lived with the threat of the Cold War era, and those who had not. The former minister, currently a serving Conservative MP, pointed out that the prime minister grew up without that existential threat.
Compared with this time last year, Vladimir Putin is stronger, politically more than militarily. Some of those against the invasion have gathered in Pushkin square in the centre of Moscow to protest. The BBC Russian's Anastasia Golubeva estimates there were initially more than 200 people assembled before police instructed people to move on. Savanta ComRes interviewed 1,021 people aged 18 and up in Russia and 1,075 people 18 and up in Ukraine online between February 7 and 15.
Neither a majority of Russians nor Ukrainians say the two countries should be one, but one in three Russians does think so
“Russians tend to say Ukrainians and Russians are one people because (1) they generally have had little contact with Ukraine and (2) this is what their president says and very similar to the Soviet line,” Snyder said. And most Ukrainians reject Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assertion in a speech on Monday that their country has no historical basis and is essentially a creation of the Soviet Union. And when it comes to Russian war casualties, Koneva said the losses have been successfully covered up by the country’s strict censorship measures. Even then, the support rate decreased by only a few percentage points, from 58% to 52%. But it recovered to 57% after three weeks in mid-October 2022. Koneva said that in June 2023, respondents were asked to send "virtual telegrams to ordinary Ukrainian citizens."
It follows a series of similar drone raids on Russian energy infrastructure in recent weeks, some of which have disrupted fuel production. Moscow has claimed its forces have taken control of the village of Tabaivka in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region. Unnamed Indian government sources have suggested India wants to distance itself from Russia, according to Reuters news agency. "A frank and constructive dialogue is expected to improve relations between states," the Ukrainian president's office said on its official channel on the Telegram messaging app alongside a photo of Mr Szijjarto, Mr Kuleba and Mr Yermak.
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More so than Ukrainians, Russians have a difficult time defining a history without the Soviet Union at the center,” the Yale historian said. The differing views of the USSR stem from different relationships with it, Snyder said. Ukrainians overwhelmingly feel Russia and Ukraine should be two separate countries, with 85% saying so, 9% saying they should be one country, and 6% responding that they did not know. No region of Ukraine, and no age group, has a majority where respondents say Russians and Ukrainians are one people.
But everyone who wants to participate can easily find out about it. For example, in certain online communities, they’ll just post a single number (indicating a date) and everyone understands everything. But I don’t feel safe expressing my opinion, especially when I talk about it online or on the phone.
Asked if he and his friends were scared to come to the rally, he said, "No. This is not frightening. What is happening in Ukraine and its borders is frightening. What we have here now is nothing." "It is not clear what to do and it is very scary," he says. "But apart from the fear, there is a sense of horror and a sense of shame about what our authorities are doing. In https://euronewstop.co.uk/what-would-happen-if-russia-launched-a-nuke-in-ukraine.html of friends this is a very common feeling. Shock, horror and bewilderment - three words that could describe the mood of many in the capital Moscow and the southern city of Rostov on Thursday. But there is division over whether President Putin's actions are to be condemned or applauded, BBC Russian reporters discover. The margins of sampling error for these geographic regions are between 5.8 and 7.6 percentage points.
- Roughly speaking, I just started helping another part of the population.
- But three older people - two middle aged men and an elderly woman - are much more supportive of the invasion.
- The protesters trickle along smaller streets, following location updates from dedicated Telegram channels.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, most people in Ukraine disagree with the use of force against them. Seven out of 10 respondents there said it would be wrong for Russia to use military force to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO (70%) or to reunite the two countries (73%). They are still trying to track Russian public opinion on key topics, including the war in Ukraine, providing a rare window into how the Russian public views the war’s dramatic turns over the last 18 months. Early Thursday morning, any remaining skepticism that their country would invade was put to rest, when Mr. Putin declared a “special military operation” in Ukraine.
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His speech comes after weeks of speculation over whether the Kremlin would seize the occasion to announce an escalation in the war, says Mai’a Cross, Edward W. Brooke Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Northeastern. Gen Sanders' speech was intended to be a wake-up call for the nation. But without political support, the mindset of a country that does not feel like it is about to go to war is unlikely to change. Last week, another senior Nato military chief said countries needed to be on alert "and expect the unexpected". Adm Rob Bauer, who heads the alliance's military committee, said the public needed to change their mindset for an era "when anything can happen at any time".
Volkov says these polls are conducted face-to-face, and people are assured of anonymity. Still, he notes, the survey results reveal at least as much about what people are willing to say in public than about how they truly feel. The roots of Russia's invasion of Ukraine go back decades and run deep.
- A woman in a raspberry pink coat with her glasses perched on her face mask is also sure the invasion was a good call.
- “For me, the special military operation is a stage that must be passed – whether there should be an intrusion into so many lives is another matter.
- People get used even to war, especially if they live far from the battleground.
- Even before his speech on Monday, Putin had been pushing the view that the two peoples are one, particularly in a tendentious essay last summer.
Hungary previously said it would block further financial aid to Ukraine, but this morning suggested it was ready to compromise after the EU reportedly drew up plans to hit Budapest's economy. "But if Central/Eastern Europe felt abandoned by those powers, it's not hard to imagine a Polish or even a Ukrainian nuclear program." This could see states like Poland and the Baltics decide to aid Ukraine on their own, which "might leave NATO's eastern front vulnerable and cause a crisis within the EU and European NATO". "The nightmare scenario would be that the states close to Russia double down on aid to Ukraine while those farther west decide to force a deal on Putin's terms. Then Europe itself could fracture," he says. If the US abandons the military alliance, it will fall to European countries to ensure a Ukrainian victory, Mr OBrien says. Despite these divisions in Ukrainian society, it should also be said that since the Russian annexation of Crimea earlier this year, many Ukrainians - from east and west - feel Russia has gone too far, and has destabilized their homeland.
Russians and Ukrainians also differed on their views of the Soviet Union. Just over a quarter (28%) of people in Ukraine say Russians and Ukrainians are one people, while two thirds (66%) say they are not – a mirror image of the view from across the border. Smuggled into the essay is the notion that there was a Russian nation, in the modern sense, against which Ukraine defined itself. But there was no such Russian nation in the 19th century,” he said. But Pozner argued that Russians understand an invasion of Ukraine would be costly.
- “Everyone has their own opinion but in general, I believe that children and teenagers should not directly express an ardent point of view about politics, and about the special military operation.
- “I know activists from other countries and they support Russian activists, but they don’t understand how we can continue to live and work under the war and the current government.
- Putin’s total control of the Russian media mobilized anti-Ukrainian hysteria among Russians in the decade leading up to the Kremlin’s 2014 aggression.
- But 66 percent of Russians aged between 18 and 24 have a positive or very positive attitude toward Ukraine.
- Just over a quarter (28%) of people in Ukraine say Russians and Ukrainians are one people, while two thirds (66%) say they are not – a mirror image of the view from across the border.
There has been a raft of sanctions imposed on Russia and on Russian citizens in the past week in response to President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Western powers are unwilling to send troops to fight in the conflict but have sought to make the Kremlin’s actions unsustainable with tough economic punishments. “Everyone has their own opinion but in general, I believe that children and teenagers should not directly express an ardent point of view about politics, and about the special military operation.