Volkov says these polls are conducted face-to-face, and people are assured of anonymity. Still, he notes, the survey results reveal at least as much about what people are willing to say in public than about how they truly feel. The roots of Russia's invasion of Ukraine go back decades and run deep. The current conflict is more than one country fighting to take over another; it is — in the words of one U.S. official — a shift in the world order.Here are some helpful stories to make sense of it all. But European nations closer to Russian borders appear to be taking it more seriously. For example, when Russian armed forces met much fiercer resistance from Ukrainians in March and April 2022, and reports of high death tolls filtered back into Russia, FilterLabs detected a decrease of support for the war in many regions of the country. About 38% of Russians did not consider war with Ukraine a real possibility as of December 2021, according to Levada Center polling. Gen Sanders' speech was intended to be a wake-up call for the nation. Hungary previously said it would block further financial aid to Ukraine, but this morning suggested it was ready to compromise after the EU reportedly drew up plans to hit Budapest's economy. “The Kyiv regime is continuing to show its vicious side in that they are striking civilian infrastructure. They are striking people, civilians,” he said, adding that the attack on the same day in Donetsk which killed 25 was a “heinous act of terrorism”. A Ukrainian father was killed and his daughter wounded in a Russian attack on an eastern Ukrainian city on Monday morning. Britain has loosened travel restrictions on four western Ukrainian regions. Russia's Shifting Public Opinion on the War in Ukraine Russia's invasion of Ukraine has focussed the West's military minds. “Britain has, again, as with all of those other things, led the way with a £2.5billion package and a security agreement, a cooperation agreement with president Zelensky and Ukraine. The Russian foreign secretary flew on an unspecified “northern route to bypass unfriendly countries” in 12 hours and 45 minutes, Russian state news agency Tass reported. Ukrainian drones attacked a St Petersburg oil terminal on Friday and another 110 miles west at Ust-Luga on Sunday. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank said fears of “hypothetical Nato attacks” meant the Leningrad Oblast was not well-placed to defend attacks by Ukrainian drones coming from the south. Twenty-one per cent of TV viewers didn’t know the goal of the operation. Warnings about the shrinking size of the army have also been sounded by former military chief General Lord Dannatt, who told The Times numbers had reduced from 102,000 in 2006 to 74,000 today and were still falling fast. The man, 49, and his daughter, 31, were caught up in an attack at 9.25am on Kramatorsk, Donetsk, governor Vadim Filashkin said. Those standing against Mr Putin in the upcoming election, including anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin, have until Wednesday to gather the required number of supporters' signatures to back their campaigns. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has been serving prison time since 2021 after leading street protests and starting a nationwide opposition movement, was recently moved to a penal colony in Russia's far north. However, Mr Orban's political director said this morning that Hungary was open to using the EU budget to allow further aid for Ukraine. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been highly critical of the EU's financial and military aid for Ukraine and has maintained close ties with Russia. Mr Zelenskyy has called for public officials to disclose their incomes to increase transparency and eliminate corruption as Ukraine tries to meet the stringent requirements for its bid to join the European Union. Only aircraft deployed to protect energy facilities, or those carrying top Russian or foreign officials, will be allowed to fly with special permission in the designated zones, according to the Vedomosti daily newspaper. President of Ukraine By that, he means that those who were most connected to the outside world might have been less inclined to support Putin's military operation, but now find themselves cut off from the West. That means they're on conflicting sides — and feel the shunning of Russia most of all. Volkov adds that public opinion matters, even though the Russian government isn't taking the public's pulse in order to plan its next moves. He says officials are instead monitoring the situation to make sure that it's under control. To train and equip that larger army would inevitably require more money. The government says it wants to spend 2.5% of national income on defence - but has still not said when. “We’re all living on credit given to us by the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” she said. “Not just us but all of Europe is living on this credit.” https://euronewstop.co.uk/what-is-australia-saying-about-ukraine.html added, “I want to mark my position as someone lacking objectivity. One is peddled by the best-known talk-show hosts who tell viewers that the “special operation” is part of Russia’s total and existential war with the West—which is, of course, hell-bent on obliterating Russia. This apocalyptic narrative sets up Ukraine as the site of this great battle. The second narrative, prevalent on news programmes, emphasises that the “special military operation” in Ukraine is being conducted by professionals to liberate the Russian people of Donbas and other regions. It is presented as a “just war” predicated upon Russia’s responsibility to help Russians in need. This is particularly true in the regions of Russia most heavily targeted by Putin’s mobilization. Some of the first data FilterLabs gathered after the invasion was from the republic of Buryatia, a mostly rural, underdeveloped region 3,700 miles from Moscow and bordering Mongolia. Many of those drafted into the Russian army regardless of age, military experience and medical history come from ethnic minority dominant regions like Buryatia. In April, a national propaganda campaign created a positive spike in local sentiment in Buryatia towards the war that lasted for 12 days before reverting to pre-campaign levels. Sentiment analysis is a well-tested form of artificial intelligence that trains computers to read and understand human-generated text and speech. Surveys have suggested that the majority of Russians support the invasion. But it is difficult to determine how reliable these surveys are, in light of new crackdowns on free speech and dissent in Russia, where even the use of the word “war” to describe the invasion is now a crime. In the meantime, sanctions affect every Russian citizen in their daily lives – both those who support and those who oppose the war, those at home and those abroad. The results from organisations such as Russian Field and Chronicles do not tally with binary stereotypes of all Russians as either fascist automatons or repressed westernisers dreaming of a Eurocentric future. A larger country claiming a smaller country is called imperialism,” he told CNN by email. Considering all this, telling Russian men and their families that it is in their interest to fight, and die, in faraway Ukraine is a harder story to sell. Russians are more likely than Ukrainians to support changing the borders of the two countries so that regions in Ukraine where people may “feel” more Russian could formally become part of Russia. Ukraine’s president signed a decree instructing the government to develop a plan for preserving the national identity of the “historically inhabited lands” of Krasnodar Krai, Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kursk and Rostov. Since the invasion, Russian state-sponsored propaganda waves elevated public sentiment toward the war for an average of 14 days across all regions and topics. “The feeling of the inevitability of war from the life of Russians, the feeling that the war is now with us, and we are with this life, caused the emergence of new meanings of war,” Zhuravlev said. “For example, a person says, 'I support,' but then researchers will follow up with questions to determine if they are ready to go to war, ready to donate to the Russian army or expect benefits from a possible victory, Koneva explained. In a written response to questions, she said that despite the self-censorship, pollsters can usually have higher confidence in the reliability of poll findings that show some fluctuation over time. Vladimir Putin’s Russia has sharply constricted the space for free expression in recent years, but some independent pollsters who fled the country have not abandoned their work. One-quarter of respondents say they already feel the effect of those sanctions, according to Volkov.
https://euronewstop.co.uk/what-is-australia-saying-about-ukraine.html
