Yes, because Russia's propaganda, espionage and corruption arm has been focusing on the far-right parties for the past two decades, breaking from their previous focus on the far left.
The difference between modern german press and the soviet pravda, is that soviet citizens were aware the Pravda was propaganda.
Some of these opinion polls are not particularly useful though, as for example Poland is frequently signing defense deals with the US. I’m not sure it’s all that relevant how much a western EU country feels about the prospect of being attacked, as I don’t see how Portugal or Spain or France are at much geopolitical risk compared to the eastern flank.
Look at the Denmark graph (adversarial going up). I do not think in that case it is about "the likelihood that the US could be relied upon in the event that someone attacks" but about the US itself doing that.
You can hardly expect the guy attacking you to have your back.
The current US administration has made it very clear over and over again that deals, contracts and agreements don't mean shit to them.
When things start moving people can move mountains, suddenly the unemployment goes to %0 like it happened with Russia, market forces get dominated by state forces, moats like network effect or IP go to the trash.
EU doesn't force anyone to fight for them, it enables those countries that are not part of Russia, don't want to be part of Russia and are willing to fight Russian aggression to eventually be independent countries and member of EU.
May I ask from which country you are, you are talking of position that implies that Ukrainians don't have agency. It's a Russian talking point(that is "Ukrainians couldn't have chosen to join NATO and EU by themselves since they don't have agency, EU tricked them or NATO forced them to fight Russia, therefore Russia isn't the agressor but the defender here against the EU/NATO aggression").
People expect EU to do much more that EU can do by design, EU is bunch of sovereign states that coordinate and only some of those states have considerable military power but even those countries politics wouldn't allow much. AFD is pro-Russian party that is the most popular political power in Germany which means EU doesn't have the power and Germany is divided and this goes for almost all countries. Just recently in Bulgaria(which sent substential military help to Ukraine in early days of the war) the pro-Russian political power won in a landslide and today they announced that they cut all the support for Ukraine(they will keep selling though).
EU isn't the thing many people believe it is.
The American betrayal(as it is perceived) may push EU into becoming that but it's not there. At it's current form EU does the most it can.
Why "free will" is critical, is because before Russia attacked, the Ukrainian government had the sense to not in a million years accept such a terrible deal from the EU. As to how free that will really is when constantly under fire with Europe refusing to help it (despite things like the Budapest memorandum) ... is not being discussed.
This has caused a number of EU countries, like Poland and Finland, to decide that a nuclear program to get working ICBMs is a lot cheaper than counting on EU and US goodwill when they're attacked.
Ukraine is also doing a "Chinese-style" nuclear program. The idea is to get every component of ICBMs working. Ukraine, for historical reasons, needs uranium enrichment (it's either that or rebuilding two dozen nuclear reactors). So Ukraine is getting into China's/Japan's position right before they got nukes. Ukraine also has engineers that have actually designed working nuclear bombs. Meaning they're getting to the point that they "don't have nukes, BUT ..."
With the unspoken part being that they're getting to the point where they can have 100 working ICBMs ready to launch by next month.
So we'll have the Ukrainian government, armed with nukes, and a huge involuntary and very unfair war debt to the EU.
Should be interesting negotiations.
But the free will part is critical because without the "free will under pressure" Ukraine would never make itself so incredibly indebted to the EU. And we'll get to see nuclear interest-rate negotations!
You are confusing the latest 90B loan with all the other help. Also EU found a way to go around the vetoes by individual countries sending Ukraine help under EU coordination. The grants vs loans is more like 65 to 35 as a ratio.
Also lots of other half truths and unfair commentary, whatever...
How can you type such nonsense? Look at 2014 Crimean annexation - thats "how good they defended themselves" without western training and billions in weapon aid. After four years they have million plus dead but "this is fine" for the west.
So US may decide that they now own Germany because they have the Ramstein Air base but I don't think it will go as smoothly.
There are old videos from the time on Youtube, check it out.
As if we haven't seen that film before.
Or even worse, keep selling them to Israel as Germany is doing, because one genocide was not enough and two wrongs make a right.
If he's being downvoted for his "selling weapons to Israel" comment, I just want to highlight that even a majority of Germans is against it, with 80% not wanting to send weapons [1]. Of course there are different polls, and others find that "only" 30% say "stop them", plus another 43% saying "limit them [2]. Either way, only a small minority is pro "send all the weapons".
[1]: https://www.plan.de/presse/pressemitteilungen/detail/80-proz... [2]: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1615302/umfra...
Then again… Yugoslavia maybe not the best example here…
Wars and military matters are literally life and death. I try not to speculate about downvotes, but here I expect there are people who are primed to get quite emotional when someone tells them they shouldn't start arming up.
Comparing the holocaust with the invasion of Gaza stripe after 8. October (like the comment did) is such a derailing comparison anyway.
...at least if you believe EU/UA propaganda.
It's funny how they yesterday or day before yesterday annouced 21st round of Russian sanctions.
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."
Imagine you are so dumb, you do it 21 times and expect voters will take yous eriously and keep supporting if they paid it 21 times from their own wallets.
With what?
Russia has been wringing itself out to find enough soldiers to continue the war in Ukraine, and while they haven't been driven out just yet, I think it would be somewhere between "a massive stretch" and "flat-out untrue" to say they're winning.
And by and large, the rest of Europe is farther away, has a much worse/less clear casus belli from Russia's point of view, and, crucially, is part of NATO, and thus will not be fighting alone (and yes, I know Ukraine is getting a lot of support from Europe, but support isn't the same as boots on the ground).
If Russia launches an offensive against the EU, there's a damn good chance that offensive boomerangs right back around into its face.
The war in Ukraine is currently in stalemate and for Russia the most deadly war since WW2, but Russia until now didn't execute full mobilization and full scale war. The cost of full scale war would be terrible, deaths in WW2 were counted in millions (for both soldiers and civilians). Russia didn't launch an offensive against the Europe (especially Baltic states and Poland), because they are still under US nuclear umbrella.
I dunno, for decades the policy by most of the West has been (a) keep Germany from re-arming in case they start WW3 and (b) discourage nuclear proliferation by anyone, and now because the Americans have thrown security out the window in exchange for freedom to bully, we have to reverse course on both of those?
That policy lasted less than a single decade. Germany was encouraged to re-arm as soon as 1950 inofficially and 1955 officially.
Of course, note that Orban _lost_. I suspect that the far-right's Putin-fetishism is a marketing mistake on their part; "Russia is good, actually" may resonate with their base but is a very hard sell to anyone else.
...to a former member of his party Magyar, who was his colleague 2 years ago in 2024. It's amusing how some people see Magyar as some big change coming to Hungary after Orban.
I don't think anyone genuinely likes Russia, it's more about stop pretending we suddenly like Ukraine, you know you can dislike them both at same time, right?
This is highly delusional. Don't you think that if the US and Russia were an alliance, the US would provide intelligence and communication to Russia, and not to Ukraine?
But yes, the main natural predator of Americans is other Americans.
Can you give any examples of major corporations who do not have a verifiable history of corruption or anti-consumer/worker actions, not named costco?
Can you name more than 10 politicians over the last 50 years who would be considered leftist in the rest of the Anglo world?
That's a wrong analysis IMO. I think NATO as it was is completely dead. Europeans need a nuclear arsenal too (french and UK nukes are for those two countries only; that does not protect several hundred millions people). Russia is threatening escalation every day, including using nukes. Europeans need their own nukes here - relying on a corrupt orange man acting like a russian asset, is a losing strategy. Even having another guy act and roleplay as president, won't really change this fundamental problem.
Germany and Austria are once again the most dangerous countries in all of Western Europe. We'll very soon see an AfD win, and from that moment Germany will once again be hostile to the rest of Europe.
I already knew that Germany had learnt _less than_ nothing and had been saying this for years, though always being met by anger from Germans, regardless of their political allegiance. Until about a year ago, which is when at least some of them finally started admitting that indeed, they'd been living a lie.
Let me know, because I want to make sure that I'm aligned with this mystical Western Atlantacist Anglo-Saxon (insert Russian propaganda snarl-word du jour) hive mind.
What I meant was it would be more interesting to see any opinions that conflict with that above establishment consensus. For example on negotiated settlement of the Ukraine war vs. continuing the forever war. Like where do Europeans disagree with the strategic interests of the US, do they really 100% align as this poll makes it appear? How is that possible?
Is it? This is not entirely clear. And if it seemed the case, it's increasingly not looking realistic. It won't fully go back to normal, now that it's clear that the US is one election away from not only backing away from commitments, but itself threatening invasion of supposed allies.
A defense partner that sometimes announces that it's no longer an ally isn't really a defense partner, since The Enemy has the choice of when to attack and an understanding of game theory.
And as a reliable trading partner the US apparently has very poor guardrails for suddenly not honoring deals and established norms.
Turns out that the only checks&balances in the US political system is impeachment (which, as we know, is a political and not judicial process), and it's apparently impotent to protect against a rogue executive branch.
"This era could see the alliance seriously weakened – or irreparably changed" from the EU Parliament report "The Near-term Future of the Transatlantic Relationship". There's also https://carnegieendowment.org/europe/strategic-europe/2026/0...