Team Biden Says Russia Wants To Tilt European Voters Against Ukraine — but Europeans Have More on Their Minds

It might not feel so in the middle of a frosty January, but in Europe election season is already heating up. So are many Europeans’ heating bills, but that’s just a corollary of a bigger story: the war in Ukraine. Washington, meanwhile, is sounding the alarm on the possibility that Russia will conduct “information operations” aimed at swaying public opinion against Ukraine. There is little doubt that Russia will dip into its old-new bag of propaganda tricks to do what it can to dent European support for Kyiv as it struggles to shake off President Putin’s soldiers. Moscow, after all, is one of history’s best-known serial meddlers. Your correspondent is not here to belittle this problem.Europeans, though, have a lot of other things on their minds, a new study shows. The Department of State’s sudden evocation of Russian election interference, moreover, raises the specter of twin bogeymen: one is spurious claims that Russia interfered with the 2016 election of President Trump, and two is Secretary Blinken’s attempts to link Hunter Biden’s stolen laptop with a Russian disinformation campaign that apparently never existed.What makes the latter item particularly relevant is that the new warning on possible Russian mischief on the Continent comes from a little-known agency within the state department called, rather cheerfully, the Global Engagement Center. It is headed by a prominent supporter of Secretary Clinton’s past presidential aspirations, James Rubin. Mr. Rubin told reporters this week that Russia “is hoping that the number of elections in Europe this year could change what has been a remarkable coalition and disciplined opposition to its war.” That the coalition Mr. Rubin cites is badly fractured notwithstanding, that statement is curious as it evokes that great intangible of international politics, “hope.” There is no doubt that Russia deploys a mix of spies, social media, and state-run media to try to erode Western faith in democratic institutions. Predictably, the Kremlin hopes for the worst.“We do believe that the Russians will conduct information operations throughout Europe to try to change opinion on Ukraine during this election season,” Mr. Rubin added — though if he had anything concrete to add to that assertion, he did not disclose it publicly. In any event, less than five months before the European Union’s parliamentary elections, public opinion in the 27 member states is arguably being shaped less by President Putin and more by crises that have followed one another in rapid succession in recent months. Here is where the new survey comes in. It’s from the Berlin-based European Council on Foreign Relations.The migration crisis, global warming, the war in Ukraine, Covid-19, and global economic turmoil add up to the ECFR survey’s conclusion that “competing fears of rising temperatures, immigration, inflation and military conflicts” will constitute the central confrontation of the parliamentary campaigns in June.Significantly, this was not the case during the previous elections, in 2019. Five years later, Europeans are increasingly guided “by their attitude towards the crises which have affected their lives in recent years” and they are “moving away from the ideological ties of right and left.”The survey shows that climate change, not Ukraine, is voters’ main concern, with more than 73 million EU citizens (out of a total of 369 million) citing this issue as the one “that has the most impact on their future.” With some exceptions, the issue of climate change, whether such a phenomenon is real or imagined, is less divisive in Europe than it is in America. In France, le climat comes at the top of the subjects cited by the citizens surveyed — at 27 percent, it is far ahead of the others (17 percent for Covid and 16 percent for immigration). In Germany, immigration is clearly in front: 31 percent of German voters said it is the issue that has “affected their lives the most” in recent years. That is a much higher proportion than in the eight other countries surveyed. The concern is largely reflected in the latest regional elections in Germany, marked by a dramatic upswing in support for the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD party. Given their geographical proximity to Russia, the Estonians and the Poles consider the war in Ukraine the most important crisis for them.The war, though, is surprisingly absent from the concerns of many western and southern Europeans. Fewer than 7 percent of French, Italians, and Spaniards place Ukraine at the top of their concerns. In some countries on the perimeter of Europe, such as Greece and Portugal, the topic of Ukraine rarely makes front-page news anymore, though beyond simple information fatigue the war in the Middle East has something to do with that as well. This trend obviously worries Kyiv. This is especially the case as debates on financial and military aid to Ukraine are becoming more heated within the 27-member EU bloc. Mark that it has been two years since Russia invaded.Should Messrs. Blinken and Rubin be quite so focused on Russian attempts to tilt opinion against democracy? After all, what else would one expect a Slavic leviathan of a failed superpower to do? The smart money says that what Communist China and Iran may have up their sleeves to try to throw elections is more pernicious than what Moscow has been able to muster. Mr. Biden’s state department may find pro forma statements inadequate antidotes for the challenges coming from Tehran and Beijing.

Team Biden Says Russia Wants To Tilt European Voters Against Ukraine — but Europeans Have More on Their Minds

Team Biden Says Russia Wants To Tilt European Voters Against Ukraine — but Europeans Have More on Their Minds

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