Reactions to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

• 1. Introduction

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  When researchers called 31,000 Russians to ask their views on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, 29,400 of them hung up the moment they heard the question. That refusal captures something essential about the world's response to the invasion, which began on the 24th of February 2022. The invasion produced Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. More than 8.2 million Ukrainians fled the country, and a third of the entire population was displaced.

  Governments condemned the invasion in broad terms. The European Union imposed sanctions on Russian banks, barred Russian aircraft from EU airspace, and financed military equipment for Ukraine. International courts opened investigations. Protests erupted across dozens of countries. Yet, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, two-thirds of the world's population lived in countries that were neutral or leaning toward Russia.

  In March 2022-98% of Ukrainians said no part of their country was rightfully Russian territory. That figure included 82% of ethnic Russians living in Ukraine. Far from a single global verdict, the invasion produced dozens of different reactions, shaped by geography, history, and deeply contested narratives about who bore responsibility. What did those reactions look like, and what did they cost the people who made them?

• 2. Russia Silences Itself

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  Vladimir Putin signed laws making it punishable by up to 15 years in prison to publish what authorities called "fake news" about Russian military operations. Calling for sanctions against Russia became punishable by up to three years. Roskomnadzor, Russia's censorship agency, ordered all outlets to describe the conflict only as a "special military operation" and to draw all information from state-approved sources. Most Russian media complied almost immediately.

  Echo of Moscow, one of the last prominent non-state radio stations in Russia, shut down entirely. Roskomnadzor blocked access to BBC News Russian, Voice of America, RFE/RL, Deutsche Welle, Meduza, Facebook, and Twitter. State channels including Russia-24, Russia-1, and Channel One presented the invasion to domestic audiences as a liberation mission. Pro-Kremlin television personalities like Vladimir Solovyov amplified the narrative. A Moscow court demanded that Russian-language Wikipedia remove information about the invasion. When the Wikimedia Foundation refused, it was fined 5 million rubles. A second fine of 2 million rubles, equivalent to about $27,000, followed for what authorities described as military misinformation.

  OVD-Info documented at least 14,906 people detained between the 24th of February and the 13th of March 2022. Authorities targeted not only protesters but also people who had signed anti-war petitions. In July 2022, Moscow city councillor Alexei Gorinov was sentenced to seven years in prison for speaking against the invasion at a city council meeting. He was the first person jailed under the new laws. Alexandra Skochilenko and Vladimir Kara-Murza awaited similar proceedings.

  At the end of April 2022, the independent Levada Center found that 74% of Russians expressed support for the invasion, while 19% did not. Thirty-nine percent of respondents said they were not following the war at all. Older Russians, particularly those over 55, were markedly more likely to accept the state narrative. Those under 18 expressed disappointment and anxiety more than any other age group. By September 2023, Valery Fyodorov, the head of VTsIOM, Russia's state polling agency, stated in an interview that only 10-15% of Russians were actively behind the war. "Most Russians," he said, "are not demanding the conquest of Kyiv or Odesa."

• 3. A World of Competing Responses

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  The Russian ambassador to Poland was pelted with red paint by pro-Ukraine protesters while laying flowers at a Russian military cemetery. Across Europe, Russian monuments were vandalized and some were demolished. Calls for mass boycotts of Russian and Belarusian goods, media, and sports flooded social media platforms worldwide.

  Antwerp mayor Bart De Wever offered one of the sharpest political comparisons of the early period. In a March 2022 radio interview, he called Putin a "psychopath" and a "madman." He compared the situation to Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland before World War II. "What the Sudetenland was to Hitler, Crimea was to Putin," De Wever said, adding that both men had served their countries professionally before resorting to what he described as irrational behavior. Hitler had been a soldier; Putin had been a KGB agent. Both, De Wever argued, took the humiliation of defeat personally.

  Pope Francis expressed a more ambiguous view from the Vatican. He suggested NATO had contributed to the war by "barking" at Russia's door. He later warned the conflict risked resembling the Spanish Civil War, in which new and more powerful weapons were tested on real populations. He ultimately accused Russia of "armed conquest, expansionism and imperialism in Ukraine."

  In China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and across Arab regions, significant portions of the public showed sympathy for Russian narratives, driven in part by distrust of US foreign policy. State-controlled media in China amplified false claims of "secret US biolabs," an account Cuban state media echoed. Vietnamese authorities told reporters not to use the word "invasion" and to minimize coverage. South Africa's African National Congress endorsed the Russian "denazification" narrative. An Airlangga University study found 71% of Indonesian internet users supported the invasion. Malaysian social media users frequently cited the MH17 shooting as grounds for skepticism toward Western accounts.

  The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, raised a different concern. He asked publicly whether "the world really gives equal attention to black and white lives," naming Ethiopia, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Syria as conflicts that had received less attention than Ukraine. Several European newspapers, drawing on leaked Russian intelligence documents and social media photographs, also reported that Russian operatives had manufactured anti-Ukraine sentiment by photographing a small number of protesters holding anti-Ukraine signs against the backdrop of much larger demonstrations about unrelated issues. The Rand Corporation assessed that Russia was banking on a strategy of protraction, expecting Western interest to wane and Ukraine to eventually concede.

• 4. What the Law Said

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  Karim Ahmad Khan, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, opened a full investigation into war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide allegations in Ukraine on the 2nd of March 2022. Thirty-nine member states had referred the matter to the court. Russia had withdrawn from the Rome Statute, which created the ICC, in 2016 and did not recognize its authority. Ukraine had accepted ICC jurisdiction in 2014, covering events from the 21st of November 2013 onward.

  When Ukrainian forces recaptured Bucha in late March 2022, they found bodies showing signs of torture and deliberate killing, including children among the victims. As of the 25th of March, Russian attacks had resulted in at least 1,035 documented civilian deaths and 1,650 civilian injuries. Russian forces were accused of deploying cluster munitions, repudiated by most states for their immediate and long-term danger to civilians, and of damaging or destroying 191 cultural properties, including historic buildings and churches. Russian strikes also hit the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Ukrainian forces were also reportedly found to have used cluster munition rockets. A UN monitoring mission expressed concern about reported ill-treatment and public humiliation of prisoners of war in Ukrainian-controlled territory.

  Ukraine filed suit at the International Court of Justice, accusing Russia of misusing the 1948 Genocide Convention. Russia had invoked false claims of genocide as a pretext for the invasion. On the 16th of March, the ICJ ordered Russia to immediately suspend military operations by a vote of 13-2. The Russian and Chinese judges cast the two dissenting votes. The order was binding under international law, though the ICJ had no means of enforcement.

  The New Lines Institute and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights published a joint report on the 27th of May 2022. It concluded there were reasonable grounds to believe Russia had violated two articles of the 1948 Genocide Convention. By July 2022, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission had documented approximately 271 cases of Russian troops forcibly detaining Ukrainians. Many were reportedly tortured by FSB officers, and the mission assessed that Russian mass detention of around 10,000 Ukrainians was likely.

  Ukraine's first war crimes trial opened in Kyiv on the 13th of May 2022, with a Russian soldier accused of shooting an unarmed civilian. Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova stated in late March that Ukrainian prosecutors had gathered evidence for 2,500 possible war crimes cases and had identified several hundred suspects. On the 17th of March 2023, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin himself. South Africa announced it would grant Putin diplomatic immunity to attend the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg, but he ultimately did not attend. Russia sent Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in his place.

• 5. Nations at Odds

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  In Finland, support for joining NATO climbed from 28% in February 2022 to 68% by March, a shift driven directly by the invasion. Lithuania showed a firmly aligned position: a 2023 poll found 84% of Lithuanian respondents named Russia as most responsible for the war, and a separate survey found 89% supported the financial aid flowing to Ukraine.

  In Jordan, a poll conducted in March-April 2023 found that 78% of respondents wanted Russia to win the war, including through the annexation of significant Ukrainian territory. In Slovakia, a September 2022 survey found more than half of respondents leaned toward a Russian victory, compared to about a third leaning toward Ukraine. A YouGov Cambridge poll found only 26% of Turkish respondents blamed Russia for the war, while 22% blamed Western countries.

  In March 2022-39% of Kazakhstani respondents expressed support for Russia. By November 2022, that figure had dropped to 13%, while 22% expressed support for Ukraine. Belarus showed a different pattern: a Chatham House study from May 2022 found 40% of Belarusians opposed the invasion, while 32% supported it.

  In March 2022-90% of Germans said they did not trust Russia, up from 83% before the invasion, while 63% trusted Ukraine. A January 2023 Forsa poll found that over 80% of Germans believed ending the war through negotiations was more important than an outright Ukrainian military victory. By April 2024-42% of Germans surveyed supported increased military aid to Ukraine, while 22% wanted less.

  A September 2022 poll found 87% of Ukrainians opposed making any territorial concessions to Russia. A Gallup poll from early September 2022 found 70% wanted to continue fighting until victory, while 26% preferred negotiations. A Razumkov Centre survey from early 2023 found 94% of residents in central Ukraine and 90% in eastern Ukraine held a negative view of Russia.

  In an April 2022 Quinnipiac University poll, 82% of Americans called Putin a war criminal. By October 2022-73% supported continuing US aid even amid Russian nuclear threats. A 2023 CNN poll found 55% of Americans opposed authorizing additional Ukraine funding, while 45% favored it. On the 21st of February 2023, Vladimir Putin announced Russia was suspending its participation in the New START treaty. He made the announcement a day after US President Joe Biden made an unannounced visit to Ukraine. New START was the last major nuclear arms control agreement between the two countries.