The war in eastern Ukraine is no longer headline news in Western media. These days, Ukraine gets an occasional mention in projections about the wider geopolitical developments that lie ahead. But here, Ukraine’s role is little more than that of a political football kicked across the world stage. A potential rapprochement between U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin would sideline Ukraine further. And if France and Germany turn inward during their respective election years, there will be no international actor left trying to keep up the momentum behind the Minsk agreement, which aims to resolve the conflict in Ukraine.
Projections like these reduce Ukraine’s agency and, even more importantly, completely ignore the views, fears, and hopes of Ukrainian citizens. Current publicly available snapshots of Ukrainian opinions are rare, despite the valuable information they can provide in the context of Ukraine’s reform efforts. Such findings therefore deserve close attention.
