Support for Ukraine remains strong in Europe - but political polarization is growing
A new policy brief by SITE resarchers Jonathan Lehne and Maiting Zhuang analyses public support for Ukraine across the EU. Using a novel polarisation index, the authors track where the debate has become politically polarised and identify the policies which are most contested.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 triggered broad public support across Western democracies. Since then, support in the United States has declined and become sharply partisan. In this policy brief, we use Eurobarometer data from 2022 to 2024 to show that while overall support for Ukraine remains high in the European Union, it has declined over time and become more politically polarised. We introduce a polarisation index to compare trends across countries and over time. There is substantial heterogeneity: while support remains close to universal in some countries, such as Sweden, others have seen marked increases in polarisation, with support weakening particularly on the far right. We find that higher inflation is associated with greater polarisation for costly policies, such as sanctions against Russia, but not for humanitarian aid. Finally, we present suggestive evidence that polarisation in support for sanctions may reflect domestic political debate.
Key highlights from the FREE Network policy brief
- Several years after Russia’s full-scale invasion, policies supporting Ukraine remain broadly popular across the European Union and across the political spectrum.
- Countries fall into three groups: those with stable, near-universal support, and those where rising polarisation is driven by shifting attitudes on either the far right or the political left.
- Sanctions against Russia are more polarising than humanitarian aid to Ukraine, in particular in countries that experienced high inflation between 2022 and 2024.
Click here to read the full policy brief to learn more
Meet the authors
Jonathan Lehne, Assistant Professor, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics, Stockholm School of Economics
Email: jonathan.lehne@hhs.se
Maiting Zhuang, Assistant Professor, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics, Stockholm School of Economics
Email: maiting.zhuang@hhs.se
About SITE
The Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) is a leading research and policy center on economic development in low-and middle income countries, with a particular emphasis on transition in the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe.
About the FREE Network
The Forum for Research on Eastern Europe and Emerging Economies (FREE Network) is a joint initiative by SITE (Stockholm), BEROC (Minsk), BICEPS (Riga), CenEA (Szczecin), ISET-PI (Tbilisi) and KSE Institute (Kiev). Together, these research institutes form an extensive network of leading academic experts on economic issues in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
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