With the one year anniversary coming up for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to the war-torn country on Monday to emphasize how the United States (as well as other Western nations) remains dedicated to supporting the war effort against Russia.
There's only one problem: public support for the ongoing war is waning dramatically. Across the Western world more and more people are coming to their senses and realizing that we shouldn't be sending taxpayer funded weapons to Ukraine.
In America, support for the war has dropped from 60% in May 2022 to 48% today. Another poll (from Pew Research) showed that the number of Americans who think the U.S. is providing too much support for Ukraine has risen from 7% in March 2022 to 26% this past month.
The European Union remains sharply divided on the war efforts, with countries like Sweden and Finland supporting the war and others like Bulgaria and Greece standing against it. All of this brings up the question of how long we can maintain the current status quo of sending billiions of dollars to a war that doesn't involve the U.S.
We need to decide for ourselves whether we will continue funding the war, and exactly how much money we're willing to spend to support Ukraine. Are we ever going to stop funding wars across the world, or will we shift our focus to problems in our own country (East Palestine, Ohio, for example). To get a more clear understanding of people's shifting attitudes towards the war in Ukraine, please read this article from Unherd.com, which details the changes in public opinion within the past year on the subject.
An excerpt from the article is below:
On the eve of the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion, Western leaders have been working to demonstrate their unwavering commitment to the Ukrainian cause. As part of a surprise visit to Kyiv today, US President Joe Biden announced new military assistance and further sanctions on Moscow, while in Munich, European allies promised more military and financial support to Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Yet for all the solidarity on show among the leadership, cracks may be starting to emerge back home.
In America, a new AP poll has found that less than half of Americans (48%) are in favour of providing weapons to Ukraine, down from 60% in May 2022. Separately, a Pew poll from this year revealed that the share of Americans who say the US is providing too much support to Ukraine has grown from 7% in March 2022 to 26% in January 2023. What’s more, the share of Americans who said that the US is not providing enough support has dropped from 42% to 20% in the same period.
