Clouds gather over support for Ukraine

Welcome back. The week’s big event was the Nato summit in Vilnius, where Ukraine received pledges of staunch western support but was denied an unambiguous path to alliance membership. Let’s take a closer look at one aspect of this: the attitudes of political leaderships and the general public towards Ukraine in central and eastern Europe. I’m at [email protected].

Woolworths and Amazon

First, some thoughts on western aid for Ukraine in its war of self-defence against Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

During the second world war, the US sent significant amounts of tanks, planes, trucks and other war supplies to the Soviet Union to help its fight against Nazi invaders. Joseph Stalin certainly wished for more. But in his wartime correspondence with Franklin Roosevelt, I find no evidence that the US president told the Soviet dictator: “You know, we’re not Woolworths.”

However, that is how Ben Wallace, the UK defence secretary, put things this week when he said his response to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s requests for more military aid was: “You know, we’re not Amazon.”

Fortunately for the UK’s reputation, prime minister Rishi Sunak distanced himself from Wallace’s crass remark.

Some US Republicans turn against Ukraine

This episode was a reminder of the tensions simmering in the western alliance over how best to support Ukraine. They were papered over in the compromise statement agreed at the Vilnius summit that Nato would invite Ukraine to join when “allies agree and conditions are met”.

Zelenskyy gave vent to his disappointment by calling the lack of a clear-cut invitation “absurd”. However, he later rolled back these words and said his delegation was going home with “a significant security victory for Ukraine”.

Perhaps it was — for the moment. But Nato’s promise to Ukraine may not mean much if Donald Trump wins the 2024 US presidential election and the Republicans are back in power. Already radical rightwing House Republicans want to include severe restrictions on military aid for Ukraine in the annual US defence bill.

European Commission poll

US views count most heavily in Nato, but one shouldn’t ignore the mood in smaller European member states. Two important surveys published this week illustrate the point.

The first is the European Commission’s latest Eurobarometer poll.

In this survey, conducted last month, we see that, taken as a whole, public opinion in the 27-nation EU is in favour of humanitarian support for Ukraine (88 to 9 per cent), sanctions on Russia (72 to 22 per cent), paying for military aid for Kyiv (64 to 31 per cent) and inviting Ukraine to join the EU (64 to 28 per cent).

Dig a little deeper, though, and we come across evidence of less solid support for Ukraine in seven countries: Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary and Slovakia. Enthusiasm for Ukraine is most tepid in the areas of financing the purchase and supply of military equipment for Kyiv, and making Ukraine an EU candidate member.

In six of these countries (the exception is the Czech Republic), more than 50 per cent of those questioned were against financing military support for Ukraine.

In all seven, opinion is more or less evenly divided on Ukraine’s EU membership, but in one — again, the Czech Republic — a narrow majority of 46 to 43 per cent is against.

Readers will recall that Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia imposed restrictions on Ukrainian agricultural exports in April because of gluts on local markets. They were temporary measures but, all the same, a warning sign that Ukraine’s entry into the EU will be anything but simple.

Pew Research Center survey

The second poll comes from the Pew Research Center. This survey doesn’t cover all European countries, but its findings merit consideration.

The reassuring news is there is very little confidence in any EU or Nato state surveyed that Vladimir Putin will do the right thing in world affairs.

The less comforting news is that people in some countries have serious doubts about Zelenskyy. Asked if they had confidence he will do the right thing in world affairs, only 11 per cent of respondents in Hungary, 28 per cent in Greece and 38 per cent in Italy said yes.

I have no way of proving this, but I suspect you would see similar responses about Zelenskyy in those countries that emerged in the EU poll as less than wholehearted supporters of Ukraine.

Zelenskyy’s frosty talks in Bulgaria

Let’s turn to the attitudes of political leaders in central and eastern Europe.

Shortly before the Nato summit, Zelenskyy visited Sofia. It is fair to say that his talks with Bulgarian president Rumen Radev exposed major disagreements over the war.

According to this report in the Sofia Globe, Radev told Zelenskyy: “I continue to maintain that there is no military solution to this conflict . . . it is important to pay attention to consistent efforts for de-escalation, for a ceasefire, for seeking peaceful solutions through diplomacy.”

Zelenskyy hit back: “If, God forbid, a tragedy happens and you are in my place, and if you are not helped with weapons by people who share your values, what will you do? You will say, ‘Putin, take Bulgarian territories’? No, I am sure you will not do that.”

For a good, in-depth analysis of Bulgaria’s relationship with Russia, please read this study by Emilia Zankina, published by the European Center for Populism Studies.

Ructions in Romania

Next stop, Bucharest. Last October, defence minister Vasile Dîncu said Ukraine should start negotiating with Russia and that, even if it resulted in a “frozen conflict” (that is, with Moscow’s forces in partial occupation of Ukrainian land), this would be better than continuing the war.

Dîncu had to resign for making this statement, which contradicted government policy. But the fact remains that Romania takes a cautious line on the war, perhaps because it fears Russian military successes would pose a threat to Moldova, its Romanian-speaking neighbour.

Don’t forget that, since the fall of communism, Romanian governments have tended to treat Moldova as a sort of junior family member, as I explained in a February newsletter. In 2018 the Romanian parliament even voted in favour of unification with Moldova.

So political leaders in Bucharest, though loyal to the common Nato line, are wary about provoking Moscow.

Ethnic Hungarian minority in Ukraine

On we go to Budapest. Hungarian premier Viktor Orbán’s cosy friendship with Putin is well-known and needs no further comment here. His calls for an immediate peace in Ukraine are also familiar.

Still, I’d like to draw your attention to some remarks he made at the Vilnius summit. “Since the war is happening next door to us,” Orbán said, “and because of the Hungarians living in Transcarpathia, tens of thousands of Hungarians are in direct danger.”

Transcarpathia is Ukraine’s westernmost region, and the condition of its ethnic Hungarian minority is a source of permanent friction between Budapest and Kyiv.

However, don’t be fooled by Orbán’s protestations that his desire for peace is all about his fellow Hungarians in Ukraine. In early July, Russian health minister Mikhail Murashko visited Budapest in what the Hungarian media said was the first trip by a Russian government minister to an EU member state since the war’s outbreak.

According to these reports, Murashko said: “Hungary is a priority country for us, both in an economic and a cultural sense.”

Possible upset in Slovakia

We head next to Bratislava. Slovakia will hold snap elections on September 30, and the party topping opinion polls is Smer, an ostensibly centre-left movement led by Robert Fico, a former premier sceptical about sanctions on Russia.

Slovakia’s allies are worried not only about Smer’s possible victory, but about the decision of President Zuzana Čaputová, a strongly pro-western liberal, not to stand for re-election next year.

Keep in mind that Slovakia is one of the most Russophile societies in Europe, although the Ukraine war has shifted public opinion to some degree.

Dancing with Putin in Austria

We’ll finish our tour in Vienna. Parliamentary elections are due in autumn 2024, and the frontrunner in opinion polls is the misleadingly named, far-right Freedom party (FPÖ). This is one of the most explicitly Russophile extreme-right parties in Europe.

The last time the FPÖ was in power, as part of a coalition with the moderate right, Austria’s foreign minister was Karin Kneissl, who you may remember danced with Putin at her wedding in 2018.

What’s she up to now? Last month, Kneissl opened a new think-tank attached to St Petersburg University to operate under her leadership.

Austria isn’t in Nato, but is in the EU. If the FPÖ returns to power, will Austria continue to support sanctions on Russia?

All in all, I see quite a few problems building up for Nato and the EU as they try to maintain a united front of support for Ukraine.

US politics is one concern. But so, too, are the evolving political conditions of parts of central and eastern Europe.

More on this topic

The demographic challenges to Ukraine’s economic reconstruction — a report by Maryna Tverdostup, a scholar at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies

Tony’s picks of the week

• France and Germany are leading a fightback against Chinese-backed plans to expand deep-sea commercial mining for battery metals, the FT’s Kenza Bryan reports from London

• The reclusive, energy-rich central Asian state of Turkmenistan has just opened a new city named Arkadag (“the Protector”), the term used for Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, its former authoritarian ruler. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has the story

• In case you missed it, here is my obituary of the Czech-born author Milan Kundera, who died this week in Paris at the age of 94