A negotiated outcome with Russia, rather than an outright military victory for Ukraine, is now seen as the most likely outcome in most European countries, according to a large-scale public opinion poll across 15 countries.
Despite battlefield defeats, support for the Ukrainian cause remains strong across Europe, but European voters increasingly believe that it is necessary to arm Ukraine not to achieve a complete battlefield victory for the country, but rather to strengthen Ukraine’s position in future negotiations with Russia.
The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) think tank conducted the poll of 19,566 people in 15 countries in the first half of May 2024. The think tank regularly conducts surveys on Ukraine but this was the first time it conducted a survey inside Ukraine, finding that support for the war and winning is strong, despite rumors of declining morale.
Currently, 34% of Ukrainians say they have a “great deal” of trust in President Volodymyr Zelensky, and an additional 31% say they have “a fair amount” of trust — meaning that twice as many people trust their leader as those who don’t.
When asked about the most likely outcome of the war, 58% of Ukrainians expected a Ukrainian victory, 30% said it would end in peace, and only 1% saw a Russian victory. But the majority preferred ceding territory to giving up sovereignty defined by the right to join NATO and the EU.
Of the 14 European countries surveyed, only Estonia (38%) had a prevailing view that Ukraine would win the war outright. However, majorities in Sweden and Poland want Europe to support Ukraine’s fight until it has regained all of its territory. Majorities in Italy, Greece and Bulgaria are opposed to this and think that increasing arms supplies to Ukraine is a bad idea. Overall, Italy emerged as the European power least supportive of Ukraine. However, majorities in most European countries still support increasing arms supplies to Ukraine, even if it is to strengthen Ukraine’s negotiating power.
A middle group of countries, including the Czech Republic, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland, lack a national consensus on the war and the EU’s role. None of the most hardline countries supported sending troops to Ukraine.
Although 69% of Ukrainians said their country needed more weapons to defend itself, this view did not lead to disillusionment with the EU: 75% of Ukrainians viewed the EU’s role positively and thought Ukraine’s membership was necessary to win a war.
Asked to name 10 countries according to how reliable they were in helping their country, Ukrainians put the UK first with 88% saying they could “very or mostly trust” it, followed by Lithuania with 77%, but most of the countries on the list were considered trustworthy.
But some Ukrainians (a third) acknowledged that they are deeply concerned that the United States will strike a peace deal with Russia without involving Kiev.
Polls indicate that French President Emmanuel Macron has failed to get the French public to comply with his personal shift toward a stronger pro-Ukrainian stance: one-third of French people are in favor of helping Ukraine regain lost ground, another third would rather push Ukraine toward peace talks with Russia, and the remaining third are undecided.
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“What’s striking about the public opinion situation towards Ukraine is its remarkable stability. The conflict is not frozen, but public opinion on many fronts is frozen,” said Ivan Krastev, co-author of the study and chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies.
Co-author and ECFR director Mark Leonard said: “Our new poll suggests that one of the key challenges for Western leaders is reconciling the opposing positions of Europeans and Ukrainians over ending the war. Both groups recognize the need for continued military contributions to help Ukraine counter Russian aggression, but there are significant gaps over what constitutes victory and what the actual objectives of European support should be.”
The poll was conducted by Datapraxis in collaboration with YouGov, Norstat and Alpha Research and Rating Group in 15 countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Ukraine).
