![Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy poses for a picture with service members as he visits a position of Ukrainian troops in a front line [Ukrainian Presidential Press Service via Reuters]](/Uploads/Images/News/2023/10/Image-1978-20231005070718.jpeg)
As Russia’s war grinds on, is global support for Ukraine waning?
On Sunday, Slovakia’s former Prime Minister Robert Fico, a left-wing populist, won parliamentary elections with his SMER-SSD party, having campaigned on a promise to withdraw military support for Ukraine and stop sanctioning Russia.
It sent a worrying signal to Kyiv, which in recent weeks has been rowing with one of its staunchest allies, Poland, over the issue of Ukrainian grain imports, while watching on as US Republican lawmakers threaten to scupper a new aid deal.
These developments have stirred talk of a global shift in sentiment towards supporting Ukraine as the war grinds on, more than a year and a half after it began.
According to Teona Lavrelashvili, an analyst at the European Politics Centre, they could signal that several allies are ready for a “pragmatic solution” to the end of the war,.
But Kyiv will be “worried but not panicking” by the growing sense that some traditional allies have “fallen out of step”, said Sean Hanley, an associate professor in Comparative Central and East European Politics at University College London.
Fico still needs to form a coalition, but the pro-Kremlin, anti-Kyiv rhetoric that saw his party win marked a significant departure from Slovakia’s position since the start of the war. As recently as April, Slovak President Zuzana Caputova travelled to Kyiv in what had been a then-routine show of support.
Hanley told Al Jazeera that Kyiv will likely be concerned about the Slovak pivot towards Russia because it signals that “Ukraine fatigue” is setting in among allies, while fears of Slovakia’s military aid potentially being cut are less worrying.
Even so, pro-Kremlin sentiment in Slovakian politics, Hanley said, is not as widespread as in countries such as Serbia or Bulgaria.
Instead, you see more “Ukraine-sceptic” views that prioritise national interests over international causes, as populist illiberal trends challenge “the idea that you’ve got to emulate the West”.
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