The doom merchants are back. After the far right advance in the European Parliament (EP) elections last month – particularly in France – pessimists are once again despairing of Europe holding firm in its support for Ukraine as it struggles to contain Russian aggression. 

With the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Bulgaria and probably Austria this autumn lurching to the right in national elections, isn’t it only a matter of time before the balance in Europe shifts in favour of pressuring Kyiv to accept “peace” on the Kremlin’s terms, even before Donald Trump returns to the White House?

This argument can be broken down into two connected parts: the mood among European citizens, and the stance of their governments.

For the past almost two and a half years of the war, cynics have predicted that “Ukraine fatigue” would sap what they often fail to acknowledge is the West’s surprisingly stalwart support for Kyiv. 

Many Europeans are indeed afraid of drifting into another world war, and resent the cost of aiding Ukraine, looking after its refugees and ramping up domestic military spending at a time of budget austerity and high energy prices (largely caused by the war). These concerns may deepen this winter if Russia’s decimation of Ukraine’s electricity network triggers another wave of refugees.

Far-right parties have rushed to exploit these worries. Many were already sympathetic to Russian dictator Vladimir  Putin because he is seen as an opponent of Western liberal “globalism”, and a supporter of conservative so-called Christian values. Now they vacuously claim to be backing “peace”, though it is never spelled out in detail what this actually entails.

In this drive they have been backed by massive Russian disinformation. German Minister for Europe Anna Luhman warned the Prague European Summit conference last month of the damage that this could do. 

“If we don’t have public support for the war in Ukraine we will be in trouble, and Russia knows that and that is why we see a huge amount of disinformation,” she pointed out.

Vera Jourova, outgoing European Commissioner for Values and Transparency, told another summit panel that Moscow had first targeted disinformation at Slovakia, Bulgaria and Serbia, and then moved on to France, Poland and Germany before the EP elections. “Russia is the global champion of spreading propaganda and using these new [disinformation] tools,” she said.

Despite all this, a survey published by the European Council for Foreign Relations (ECFR) this week showed that most Europeans still support increasing the supply of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine. Only in Greece, Bulgaria, and Italy is there a majority against this, with respondents believing instead that Europe should push Ukraine towards negotiating a peace deal. 

“The striking thing about the state of public opinion, vis-a-vis Ukraine, is its remarkable stability – while the conflict has not frozen, in many aspects public attitudes have, ” commented Ivan Krastev, co-author of the ECFR report and chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies.

Yet at the same time, apart from Estonia and Ukraine itself, citizens in all the 15 countries polled (which also included the UK) believe that the conflict will conclude with a compromise settlement.

A Czech pollster at the Prague European Summit confirmed this ambivalent stance. At an off-the-record panel, he pointed out that two thirds of Czechs say Russia is to blame for the war, with only 10-15% blaming Ukraine and the West. But only around 30% say Czechia should support Ukraine until it wins, while 70% say it should strive for a quick end to the war.

So there is little “Ukraine fatigue” as such among European citizens at the moment, but nor is there much enthusiasm for continuing to support Ukraine until the bitter end.

The EP elections themselves did not really tell us much about European views on the war as only in a few – mainly Eastern European countries – was it a big issue, and in several of those countries – notably Poland and the Baltic states – centrist Ukraine-supporting governments were able to successfully use the war against their populist opponents. Meanwhile, for most of Western Europe, the war was far away and they had harboured few refugees. 

Nor will the increase in the number of far-right MEPs in the elections have a big impact on Europe’s stance towards Ukraine, which is in any case mainly set by governments. There is still a strong majority in the parliament that supports Ukraine and the hard-right appears to be becoming more divided, rather than less, with the recent formation of a new third far-right party group. The war remains a divisive issue among the radical and extreme right.

Orban remains isolated but for how long?

If there is no big push from citizens to end support for Ukraine, what about from governments? Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban currently remains isolated as Putin’s only true defender among EU leaders.  As the holder of the rotating EU presidency for the next six months, he will therefore be powerless to redirect the bloc’s stance.

“The mainstream remains strong,” Peter Kreko, director of the Hungarian think-tank Political Capital told a CEU Democracy Insight webinar this week.  “I think the support will hold.”

Nevertheless, he warns: “The longer the war goes on the more the pressure on politicians will grow.”

What is most worrying is that this balance in the EU could begin to change over the next six months, and this could encourage waverers – such as Slovakia’s Robert Fico – to join the “peace now” camp and back Orban both at home (as now) and in Brussels.

France will be the key test here. According to the ECFR, President Emmanuel Macron’s floating of the idea of sending Nato troops to Ukraine may have boosted the National Rally’s support in the election. If the far-right National Rally wins this weekend’s run-off elections, it will send reverberations across Europe. Whatever happens, Macron will continue to direct foreign policy, but his wings may be clipped.

“A divided public may constrain the president’s hawkishness and place a very large question mark over the sustainability of Paris’s support for Kyiv,” the ECFR report warns.

The National Rally has pledged to halt French deliveries of long-range missiles to Ukraine but it is unclear whether Marine Le Pen’s party would really expend political capital on changing France’s policy towards Ukraine, the invasion of which it condemned.

“When in opposition, parties criticise Ukraine; when they come into government it forces them to become more moderate,” says Kreko, pointing to the example of Greece’s Syriza and Italy’s Five Star movement.

But France is not the only country to fall to the far right. Italy has already been taken over by Georgia Meloni’s far-right (but Ukraine-supporting) Brothers of Italy, while pro-Moscow extremist parties look set to have big influence inside the new Dutch, Belgian and Bulgarian governments, and to do well in the upcoming Austrian elections. They could eventually constitute a blocking minority inside the European Council.

This is all happening at a time when Europe is lacking strong centrist leadership from other big states such as Germany and Spain, and thus this could transform the overall mood towards the war.

“The next five years [of the European Commission] will be much more complicated, not so much because of the results in the EP elections but because of the repercussions in the member states,” Thu Nguyễn, deputy director of the Jacques Delors Centre, told the CEU Democracy Insight webinar. 

But the real challenge comes in November, she warned, with the potential election of Trump giving a boost to pro-Russian forces in Europe, and raising serious questions over whether Europe can continue to support Ukraine on its own.

“The US election is much more important,” says Nguyen. "The real question is how we in Europe will prepare for Trump.”