Russia Matters: Poll – Majority of Russians Believe Situation in Ukraine Could Escalate to Direct Armed Conflict Between Russia & NATO

Russia Matters, 7/12/24

  1. The share of Russians who believe the “situation in Ukraine can escalate into an armed conflict between Russia and NATO” increased from 44% in January 2024 to 58% in June 2024, according to the Levada Center. Even more worryingly, the share of Russians who are very worried about “the threat of the use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict” increased from 71% in April 2023 to 73% in June 2024, according to this independent [western-backed] Russian pollster. The period of April 2023–June 2024 also saw the share of Russians who definitely believe or rather believe “the use of nuclear weapons by Russia in the course of the current conflict in Ukraine” would be justified, increase to more than one-third. 
  2. The past week has seen Hungary’s Viktor Orban embark on a series of meetings, which he said were meant to discuss potential options for negotiating peace between Russia and Ukraine. During that tour he visited Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Xi Jinping in Beijing and Donald Trump in Florida. But even before the first leg of Orban’s journey, Putin cooled down expectations by declaring at the SCO summit in Astana that a halt to fighting can only occur if Ukraine agrees to take “irreversible” steps demanded by Moscow. Putin didn’t specify what those would be, but he has recently conditioned ceasefire on Ukraine withdrawing fully from Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and giving up its bid to join NATO, among other things. Upon meeting Putin on July 5 Orban then flew to China to hear Xi tell him that “a ceasefire can only be realized soon if all major powers exert a positive rather than negative influence.” Following his meetings in Moscow and Beijing, Orban told the EU that Russian and Chinese leaders expect Ukrainian peace talks by the end of 2024, according to El Pais. He then met with Trump, promising him to “fix this problem,” according to BNE. Putin also discussed Ukraine in a separate meeting on July 9 with India’s Shri Narendra Modi, thanking the latter for “trying” to find ways to resolve the conflict. Modi said their lengthy discussion yielded “several ideas” that left him “hopeful” of a way forward, without providing further details, according to Bloomberg.