It's an open secret that the Ukraine war and the EU's continued tens of billions sent to Kiev are becoming increasingly unpopular among the European public, and hard data is beginning to reveal just how much the discontent has risen.
A new survey by no less than the (ultra-establishment entity) European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) has found not only are Europeans extremely pessimistic about Ukraine's chances of victory at this point, but more and more Europeans want to see their leaders push hard for negotiated peace.
What's more is that the new poll included a wide array of people, with responses coming from 17,023 European citizens across a dozen EU-member states.
Arguably the most stunning finding from the survey is that a mere 1 in 10 respondents said they think Ukraine can win the war against Russia.
Throughout most of the 2-year long war, a sense of optimism dominated such prior polls, reflected also in media, as the West was constantly told of the 'promising' Ukraine counteroffensive. That counteroffensive faltered starting early last summer, or from the moment it was launched.
As Politico reports, this prior optimism has now definitively turned to war pessimism...
The poll results have come out at a sensitive moment that EU leaders have been fighting to achieve consensus on funding both the war and Ukraine's budget.
According to the latest from Brussels:
On Wednesday (21 February), EU ambassadors did not manage to overcome their differences to move toward a deal and fix the rules and top up the EU’s European Peace Facility (EPF), which was used for two years to reimburse member states for their donations to Kyiv.
The discussion has run into Franco-German resistance, with both countries wishing to set up new rules for the fund rather than continue with the EPF’s current modalities.
Both countries expressed their doubts right after the EU diplomatic service (EEAS) proposed in July to create a Ukraine-only fund, dubbed the Future Ukraine Assistance Fund (UAF), worth €20 billion over five years.
At the same time a number of European states have expressed alarm that their own weapons stockpiles have been depleted after shipping them off to Ukraine, and there's a move afoot to ramp up domestic arms production.
Washington "leadership" on the issue has also been missing in action, given House Republicans continue holding up Biden's proposed $60+ billion for Ukraine over the next year. As the war enters its third year, this 'war pessimism' is going global.