During the last few days I noticed a few people demanding that every Ukrainian refugee in Germany who is of able bodied age should be forced back to Ukraine to either fight on the front or work in ammunition factories or hospitals. As far as I can tell no major publication or politician has echoed this sentiment yet. I hope that will stay this way. But the sheer audacity with which these people demanded strangers to be sent to their death is astounding. “Fighting to the last Ukrainian” really is something they want and it sickens me.
Japan, there was an initial outpouring of support, we never like to be behind on the latest Cause. There were a few marches and the like, but those seemed to be largely foreigners and the foreigner hanger-ons, I know very few people personally who participated.
A lot of that sentiment has kind of burned out from what I have seen. A lot of people I have talked to are, understandably, sad about the loss of life but see immediate peace talks as the best way to bring that about.
People were very against NATO’s attempts to built an office here (which thankfully got stopped), and were worried we would be used as a Ukraine vs China if the situation in Taiwan escalated. It’s the most vocal I have seen people protest for a while, we tend to be very politically apathetic.
Sanctions on Russia have also hurt us immeasurably, we are obviously located very close to them and rely on Russian trade in several sectors. Sanctions plus a general move away from nuclear power has resulted in a 50-60% increase in electricity bills this summer across the country. We always have people, mostly the elderly, die every year from heatstroke and there is an expectation that this summer is going to end up even worse than usual. Not to mention the yen has absolutely tanked, which reduces our buying power even more.
Basically since people here have been affected, at least economically, a lot of the popular support has waned.
Basically since people here have been affected, at least economically, a lot of the popular support has waned.
Interesting. Here in Germany we can also feel the sanctions quite a lot. Electrical bills also went up and big concerns announced that they would leave Germany and outsource their production to somewhere else. So a lot of people are afraid they could end up jobless in a while. And yet support for Ukraine is not going down. I think it just makes people more bloodthirsty.
We have had our arguments over territory, but by and large the average person here have never had a very anti-Russian point of view to begin with. It was a pretty popular language to study for business reasons, because we do so much trade with them. We also don’t have much of a connection to Ukraine.
I think a lot of the Japanese opposition was more a “war is bad” point of view, as opposed to “russia is evil”. Which results in people just wanting a resolution as soon as possible. On the other hand there’s not a good understanding of the circumstances that caused the war, and the news doesn’t really report on it. So there are still plenty of people who think Putin woke up one one day and decided to invade for no real reason. They just would still prefer the killing stops now.
Could it be that people in Germany have the idea that if evil Putin is defeated, everything will just return to normal?
So they are rabidly in support of a war that actively makes theirs lives worse on the grounds that if they “win” then things will just go back to normal, but if they “lose” then all the bad things that are happening due to their involvement in the war will become permanent?
Maybe but then again Annalena Baerbock herself said that things won’t go back to being normal “even after Ukraine has won”.
So it might be self delusion at this point.
I mean, it is going down. You can see it by the rising numbers for the AfD. While people will likely never outright go “this is a waste of time, let’s ditch Ukraine to save ourselves” there’s a lot of people going for the party they think will give them just that - and it happens to be the far-right - who have no qualms about supporting Russia over questions of morality and aren’t constantly infighting.
The whole War in Ukraine really was the nightmare scenario for the left.
and rely on Russian trade in several sectors
I’m guessing oil and metals?
For imports, metals, coal, oil, gas. Which makes it pretty readily apparent why our energy costs have skyrocketed. We actually get a lot of seafood from Russia as well, which may surprise people who assume we just get our own fish. Salmon and roe primarily, I believe.
Exports were largely cars or car parts.
