Most Europeans believe that war between Ukraine and Russia will end in negotiations

The overwhelming majority of Europeans believe that the Russian-Ukrainian war will end in peace talks, while in some countries, more than 50% are convinced that partners should push Ukraine to negotiate. 

Accroding to the results of a survey commissioned by the European Council on Foreign Relations, in almost all 14 countries where the survey was conducted, Europeans do not believe that Ukraine can win. Apart from Ukraine (the 15th country in the survey), the belief that Ukraine will end the war with a victory only prevails in Estonia. 

In other countries, a larger proportion of respondents believe that the war will end with negotiations. 

Such opinions prevail even if Western partners begin to provide Ukraine with more military assistance – in this case, the belief in Ukraine's victory increases by an average of 12 percentage points, but in eleven out of 15 countries, a peaceful settlement is still considered the most likely scenario. 

The sociologists emphasise that there are noticeable differences from country to country, as well as within each country where the survey was conducted, depending on the political views of the respondents. 

Bulgaria, Greece and Italy belong to the conditional camp of "some kind of peace as soon as possible". Estonia, Sweden, Poland, the UK, and Portugal are in the conditional camp of "peace that is fair for Ukraine", and in six other countries, opinions are divided approximately in half.  There are no major differences between the results of the January and May 2024 surveys. 

The publication notes that this split is best seen in the question of what Europe's policy should be regarding the Russian-Ukrainian war. People were asked to choose between supporting Ukraine so that it can liberate its territories and pushing Ukraine to reach some kind of agreement with Russia. 

Meanwhile, in the US, the share of those who support greater military assistance to Ukraine has increased.