EU population's perception of the war in Ukraine

Abstract

The article clarifies the EU population's perception of the war in Ukraine and identifies its cross-cultural features. The findings are based on the data of the survey “EU's response to the war in Ukraine”, conducted in April 2022 by Ipsos European Public Affairs at the request of the European Commission. The target population of the study is the citizens of the European Union member countries, aged 15 years and over (N = 26053). In the perception of the Russian-Ukrainian war, informational and activity-related aspects were distinguished. The first one included indicators of informational involvement (frequency of following and discussing news about the war in Ukraine) and trust in various sources of information (national authorities, European authorities, NGOs, journalists, and social media). The second one consisted of indicators of approval of measures announced by the EU (economic sanctions against Russia and Russian oligarchs, financial support to Ukraine, military and humanitarian aid, the ban on broadcasting in the EU of state-owned Russian media, welcoming in EU people feeling the war) and satisfaction with reactions of main actors (national authorities, the EU, NATO, UN, USA, citizens of own country). For cross-cultural comparison of various aspects of Russian-Ukrainian war perception, several macro indicators have been constructed. Common characteristics of the war perception in EU countries were a high frequency of following news and discussing it with friends and relatives, approval of main EU measures aimed at supporting Ukraine; great satisfaction with the reaction of the main actors to the events in Ukraine. People do not equally trust various sources of information and the ranking of sources according to their credibility has cross-cultural differences. The most reliable sources were national and EU authorities and fewer people trust NGOs and journalists. Social media were widely untrusted. At the same time, there are two main patterns of trust in various sources. The first one is a combination of distrust in social media with high trust in other sources. The second one is distrust in most or even all sources of information.