Different Parts Of Ukraine Still United Against A Common Enemy

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Belarus was chosen because it shares a similar historical, linguistic and ethnic background to Ukraine, but the two nations have diverged in their geopolitical paths. Shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Belarus, like Ukraine , forged ahead in attempting to build democratic systems. But after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko came to power in 1994 , the country become an authoritarian state with a high dependence on Russia for political and economic support.

In broad terms, Ukraine has had an opposite trajectory. Relations between Ukraine and Russia fluctuated over the initial years of independence. But since the Maidan revolution of November 2013 to February 2014, a staunch pro-Western leadership has emerged.

Still, certain segments of the population in Ukraine continued to hold affinities toward Russia – most notably, the Russian-speaking older generation in the country's east.

Our surveys provide a kind of natural experiment looking at the impact of a Russian invasion on previous pro-Russian public sentiment.

Ukraine serves as the“treatment” group and Belarus as a“quasi-control” group, with the distinguishing factor being a Russian invasion. The questions we asked:“Who do you think is responsible for the worsening tensions between Russia and Ukraine?” and“In general, how do Russian policies affect your country?”

Ukrainian, American and Russian delegates meet for peace talks on May 16, 2025, in Istanbul, Turkey. Arda Kucukkaya /T urkish Foreign Ministry Converging blame

We found that in Ukraine, but not in Belarus, geopolitical views were sharply unified by the experience of the invasion. On one level, this is not surprising – after all, the people of a country being invaded would be expected to hold some degree of resentment to the invading army.

But what we found most interesting is that this effect in Ukraine massively overrode the split among various identities before the invasion. This was most prominent in people's perceptions of who was to blame for rising tensions.

Prior to the invasion, 69.7% of respondents in Ukraine overall blamed Russia for the tensions between the two countries, with 30.3% blaming NATO, Ukraine or the US. By August 2022, 97.3% of respondents in Ukraine blamed Russia for the tensions, with only 2.7% blaming NATO, Ukraine or the US.

By comparison, in the neighboring country of Belarus, 15.5% of respondents blamed Russia for the tensions prior to the invasion, and only 21.9% of respondents blamed Russia for the tensions after the invasion.

This near unanimity in Ukraine masks the massive shifts you see when broken down for demographic differences. For example, blame varied widely across regions of Ukraine before the invasion but converged after the invasion. Prior to the invasion, only 36.0% of respondents in the east of Ukraine and 51.4% of respondents in the south of Ukraine blamed Russia for the tensions. After the invasion, over 96% of respondents in both regions blamed Russia.

A similar effect can be seen across other demographic differences. Only 30.6% of Catholics in Ukraine blamed Russia for the tensions prior to the invasion, while 83.0% blamed Russia later on.

What were once stratified opinions before the invasion became uniform afterward.

To check that this trend was not just an immediate post-invasion blip, we conducted the surveys again in September 2024 and February 2025. The overall proportion of Ukrainians who blamed Russia for the tensions remained high, with 85.7% and 84.5%, respectively. And again, these results held across the various demographic breakdowns.