Trump fails to dampen public support for Ukraine
www.brookings.edu
Despite Trump’s actions, the level of overall American public sympathy with Ukraine has not changed since the summer of 2024.

Despite Trump’s decidedly critical tone toward Ukraine and its president and warm gestures toward Russia, the level of overall American public sympathy with Ukraine and the lack of sympathy for Russia have not changed since the summer of 2024. If the intent of the public spat with Zelenskyy was to sour the American mood toward Ukraine, the latest poll indicates that it was a failure, not only in the continued high level of sympathy with Ukraine but also in that more people rated Trump’s performance as inappropriate than said the same about the Ukrainian president’s performance in that unprecedented meeting.

With only about one-third of Americans supporting his decision to suspend aid to Ukraine, Trump may have helped himself by quickly renewing the provision of aid and getting Ukraine to reportedly agree to a 30-day ceasefire in the war with Russia.

As one might expect, the president has had some impact on his core Republican constituency. But the drop in Republican sympathy with Ukraine from 58% last summer to 45% now is modest if one considers that the Republican president is still in his early honeymoon period.

Trump received more support from Republicans for his aid suspension, with about two-thirds supporting the decision, and 21% opposing it. But while favoring Trump, one might expect more support for a president from his own party on a top and high-profile policy issue this early in his term.

Of course, a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war could impact public attitudes moving forward, especially at a time when polls show more Americans favor a quick end to the war. For now, though, the bottom line is that the American public appears to have made up its mind on Ukraine and Russia and Trump is cutting against the grain.

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      3·
      16 hours ago

      Oh right, ok… Yanukovych was a Russian stooge.

      I’m American. If/when Trump is deposed, I’m not going to be upset because, say it with me now “he’s a Russian stooge”

      • NimdaQA@lemmy.world
        11·
        16 hours ago

        So you believe that it was a good thing for literal Neo-Nazis (members of the Right Sector and other similar organizations) to commit a massacre using sniper rifles leading to the overthrow of a democratically elected government. While he is indeed corrupt, the 2010 election was overseen by foreign observers and there is no evidence of fraud.

        Nothing good came out of it. The only thing it led to was a civil war because many people in Eastern Ukraine supported him.

        Zelenskyy is not any better. He literally violated the consitution and was becoming increasingly autocratic.

        Like it seems like you prefer a dictatorship over a democracy when they align with your views. This will backfire in the long run just like it did in Ukraine. Look at Romania where the frontrunner of the election got arrested and banned over flimsy allegations because he is far-right. I do not agree with his far-right views but this will only lead to a far-right landslide in the next election or a reverse Maidan which nearly occurred in the country of Georgia after the anti-Russian President refused to step down following the democratic election of a pro-Russian government. Like this is only solidifying Russian influence over its neighbors due to western countries or western-aligned politicians being bad actors.

        Now instead of Ukraine becoming a western-aligned nation without a civil war or without Russia launching invasion after new democratic elections in 2015, now almost a quarter of the country is occupied by Russia because they decided to launch an undemocratic coup in 2014 instead.