Despite Kremlin claims, 82% of Russian-speaking Ukrainians view Russia negatively, poll shows

A vast majority of Russian-speaking Ukrainians — those how primarily speak Russian at home — view Russia negatively, according to a survey published on May 27 by Kyiv-based think tank Razumkov Center in cooperation with the Kyiv Security Forum.
The poll, conducted between April 24 and May 4, 2025, surveyed 2,021 Ukrainian citizens aged 18 and older in territories under Ukrainian government control. According to the survey, only 11% of respondents said they primarily speak Russian at home.
Of those, 82% said they had a negative view of Russia.
The results come as Russia continues to invoke the supposed plight of Russian-speaking communities to justify its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But the data suggests this narrative is widely rejected by those it claims to defend.
As recently as May 23, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed Moscow "cannot leave" Russian-speaking residents in Kyiv-controlled areas and would "protect them."
Only 13% of Russian-speaking respondents maintain a favorable opinion of Russia. By contrast, admiration for Western countries remains strong — 79% of respondents view France positively, and 75% feel the same about the United Kingdom.
The survey also found that 42% of respondents identified the European model of social development as the most attractive. Just 6% expressed a preference for the Russian model, further undermining Kremlin rhetoric about cultural and political alignment.
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Support for Ukraine's military remains resilient. Some 81.5% of those surveyed said they trust the Armed Forces of Ukraine, a reflection of sustained public confidence despite ongoing Russian attacks. Only 14% expressed distrust.
Before the war, many of the cities now devastated by Russian attacks and occupation — Mariupol, Kharkiv, Sievierodonetsk — were predominantly Russian-speaking.
Rather than protection, these regions have endured mass displacement, forced deportations, and indiscriminate bombardment by Russian forces.
The war has also catalyzed a national shift in language use.
According to a 2024 Rating Group poll, 70% of Ukrainians now speak exclusively or primarily in Ukrainian at home — up from 50% in 2015 and 46% in 2006.
In 2014, just after Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea, a separate Rating Group poll showed that 56% of Ukrainians already opposed granting Russian the status of a second state language.
Read also: Sanctions on Russia are working, Ukraine just needs more
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UPI

22 minutes ago

• UPI

Russia: Other nations ready to supply Iran with nukes after U.S. strike

President Donald Trump is joined by his national security team in the Situation Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on Saturday, June 21, 2025, as U.S. bombers executed strikes on the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear infrastructure. Photo via The White House/UPI | License Photo June 22 (UPI) -- In the wake of President Donald Trump's strike on Iran's nuclear sites Saturday, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Sunday that "a number of countries" are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear weapons. Gen. Dan Caine said at a Pentagon press conference Sunday that measuring the damage at the sites would take time but that an initial assessment indicates that all three sites sustained "severe damage and destruction." He revealed that the mission involved 75 precision-guided munitions, including 14 GBU-57 bunker-busters. "Do you remember that the operation was beginning, I promised you that Iran's nuclear facilities would be destroyed, one way or another. This promise is kept," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on social media, revealing that the strike was carried out by the United States in "full coordination" with the Israeli Defense Forces. While Israeli and American authorities have indicated major damage at Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan, Iranian and Russian authorities have indicated only minor damage to Iran's capabilities for nuclear enrichment. "What have the Americans accomplished with their nighttime strikes on three nuclear sites in Iran?" Medvedev questioned in a post on social media. "The enrichment of nuclear material -- and, now we can say it outright, the future production of nuclear weapons -- will continue. A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads." Medvedev said Iran's political leadership has survived despite Israel's apparent pursuit of a regime change and may have "come out even stronger." Like Russia, Iran ally Pakistan is armed with nuclear weapons but said Thursday that it had not yet received requests for any military assistance from Iran while expressing alignment with its neighbor. It has since condemned the U.S. attack on Iran. "The unprecedented escalation of tension and violence, owing to ongoing aggression against Iran, is deeply disturbing. Any further escalation of tensions will have severely damaging implications for the region and beyond," Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement Sunday. Sa'eed Iravani, Iran's ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations in New York, has called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, Iranian state media reported Sunday. Iran is calling for the Security Council to rebuke the United States, which is a permanent member of the UNSC. The Russian Foreign Ministry also released a statement condemning the strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, calling them a violation of international law and the United Nations charter. It called the attack a "substantial blow to the global non-proliferation regime built around the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons." "They have significantly undermined both the credibility of the NPT and the integrity of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) monitoring and verification mechanisms that underpin it," the Russian Foreign Ministry said. China's Foreign Ministry likewise said the United States had violated the U.N. charter and international law as it called for Israel to reach a ceasefire "as soon as possible." "China stands ready to work with the international community to pool efforts together and uphold justice, and work for restoring peace and stability in the Middle East. A Telegram account affiliated with the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps said Sunday that satellite images show Iran had evacuated everything from the Fordow site 48 hours before the US attack and moved it to a safe location. "This image shows a large number of trucks that had quickly evacuated enrichment materials, equipment and other supplies from the Fordow site," the post reads. "It is clear that Trump's failed and dramatic attack not only did not damage the underground Fordow facilities, but the site was empty." Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director-general of the IAEA, said Sunday he will call an emergency meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors on Monday after the American strike. He said Iranian nuclear officials had not recorded an increase in off-site radiation levels. "As of this time, we don't expect that there will be any health consequences for people or the environment outside the targeted sites," Grossi said. "We will continue to monitor and assess the situation in Iran and provide further updates as additional information becomes available." In apparent criticism of the United States, Grossi said he had "repeatedly stated that nuclear facilities should never be attacked." He called for Israel and the U.S. to stop their "hostilities" against Iran so that the IAEA's "vital inspection work" in Iran could continue. Meanwhile, the IRGC-affiliated Telegram channel said Sunday that Iran struck Israel's Ben Gurion Airport, as well as a biological research center that reportedly housed research into biological warfare, among other military targets. "This time, sirens sounded after the precise hits, throwing the enemy off balance," the statement said. "We announce that the main parts of the capacity of the Islamic Republic of Iran's armed forces in this sacred defense have not yet been put into operation." Meanwhile, Israel's war against Gaza continues. The Gaza Health Ministry said Sunday that the death toll has risen to 55,959 people while medical facilities are facing blood shortages. The WAFA news agency reported Sunday that Israeli forces reportedly detained at least 26 Palestinians in the West Bank on Sunday after conducting overnight raids.

Atlantic

28 minutes ago

• Atlantic

Trump Got This One Right

'Why are the wrong people doing the right thing?' Henry Kissinger is supposed to have once asked, in a moment of statesman-like perplexity. That question recurred as Donald Trump, backed by a visibly perturbed vice president and two uneasy Cabinet secretaries, announced that the United States had just bombed three Iranian nuclear sites. It is a matter of consternation for all the right people, who, as Kissinger well knew, are often enough dead wrong. The brute fact is that Trump, more than any other president, Republican or Democrat, has taken decisive action against one of the two most dangerous nuclear programs in the world (the other being North Korea's). The Iranian government has for a generation not only spewed hatred at the United States and Israel, and at the West generally, but committed and abetted terrorism throughout the Middle East and as far as Europe and Latin America. Every day, its drones deliver death to Ukrainian cities. The Iranian government is a deeply hostile regime that has brought misery to many. A nuclear-armed Iran might very well have used a nuclear weapon against Israel, which is, as one former Iranian president repeatedly declared, 'a one-bomb country.' Because Israel might well have attempted to forestall such a blow with a preemptive nuclear strike of its own, the question is more likely when an Iranian bomb would have triggered the use of nuclear weapons, not whether it would have done so. But even without that apocalyptic possibility, a nuclear-armed Iran would have its own umbrella of deterrence to continue the terror and subversion with which it has persecuted its neighbors. There is no reason to think the regime has any desire to moderate those tendencies. In his address to the nation on Saturday night, Trump was right to speak—and to speak with what sounded like unfeigned fury—about the American servicemen and servicewomen maimed and killed by Iranian IEDs in Iraq. It was no less than the truth. Shame on his predecessors for not being willing to say so publicly. When someone is killing your men and women, a commander in chief is supposed to say—and, more important, do—something about it. Trump was also right in making this a precise, limited use of force while holding more in reserve. Israel has done the heavy lifting here, but he has contributed an essential element—and no more. He was right as well (for the strikes were indeed an act of war) to threaten far worse punishment if Iran attempts to retaliate. The rush in many quarters—including right-wing isolationists and anguished progressives—to conjure up prospects of a war that will engulf the Middle East reflected their emotions rather than any analytic judgment. Iran, it cannot be said often enough, is a weak state. Its air defenses no longer exist. Its security apparatus has been thoroughly penetrated by Israeli, American, and other intelligence agencies. Its finances are a wreck and its people are hostile to their rulers. For that matter, anyone who has served in uniform in the Middle East during the past few decades knows that Iran has consistently conducted low-level war against the United States through its proxies. Could Iran attempt to attack shipping in the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz? Yes—and members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy would die in large numbers in their speedboats or in their bases as they prepared to do so. The United States and its allies have prepared for that scenario for a long time, and Iranian sailors' desire for martyrdom has been overstated. Could Iran try to launch terror attacks abroad? Yes, but the idea that there is a broad silent network of Iranian terrorists just waiting for the signal to strike is chimerical. And remember, Iran's nuclear fangs have been pulled. True enough, not permanently, as many of the president's critics have already earnestly pointed out on television. But so much of that kind of commentary is pseudo-sophistication: Almost no strategic problem gets solved permanently, unless you are Rome dealing with Carthage in the Third Punic War, destroying the city, slaughtering its inhabitants, and sowing the furrows with salt. For some period—five years, maybe 10—Iran will not have a nuclear option. Its key facilities are smashed and its key scientists dead or living in fear of their lives. Similar complaints were made about the Israeli strike on the Iraqi Osirak reactor in 1981. The Israelis expected to delay the Iraqi program by no more than a year or two—but instead, the program was deferred indefinitely. As things go, crushing the facilities at Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan, following a sustained Israeli campaign against similar targets, was a major achievement, and a problem deferred for five years may be deferred forever. As for Iran, in 1988 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini agreed to 'drink from the poisoned chalice' and accept a cease-fire with Iraq. He did so because the Iraq war was going badly, but also because he believed that the United States was willing to fight Iran: Operation Praying Mantis in 1988, following a mine explosion that damaged an American warship, involved the U.S. Navy sinking Iranian warships and destroying Iran's military installations. In 2003, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iran reportedly paused its nuclear program. When American forces in Iraq finally picked up five elite Quds Force members in 2007, the Iranians pulled back from their activities in Iraq as well. The killing of Qassem Soleimani in 2020 elicited only one feeble spasm of violence. The bottom line is that Iran's leaders do not relish the idea of tackling the United States directly, and that is because they are not fools. The president is an easy man to hate. He has done many bad things: undermining the rule of law, sabotaging American universities, inflicting wanton cruelty on illegal immigrants, lying, and engaging in corruption. With his fractured syntax and diction (including the peculiar signature 'Thank you for your attention to this matter' at the end of his more bombastic posts on Truth Social) he is easy to dismiss as a huckster. The sycophancy and boastfulness of his subordinates, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth when briefing the attack, are distasteful. But contempt and animosity, justified in some cases, are bad ways of getting into his mind and assessing his actions. Trump has surprised both friends and critics here. The isolationist wing of the MAGA movement was smacked down, although its members probably include the vice president and top media figures such as Tucker Carlson. Trump has confounded the posters of TACO ('Trump always chickens out') memes. He has disproved the notion that he takes his marching orders directly from the Kremlin, for the strikes were not in Russia's interest. He has left prominent progressives, including a dwindling band of Israel supporters, confused, bleating about war-powers resolutions that were deemed unnecessary when the Obama administration began bombing Libya. We live in a dangerous world, and one that is going to get more so—and indeed, in other respects worsened by the president's policies. But Trump got this one right, doing what his predecessors lacked the intestinal fortitude (or, to be fair, the promising opportunity) to do. He spoke with the brutal clarity needed in dealing with a cruel and dangerous regime. The world is a better place for this action and I, for one, applaud him for it.

Newsweek

2 hours ago

• Newsweek

Russia Says Countries Now Ready to Supply Iran With Nuclear Weapons

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, said Sunday that President Donald Trump "has pushed the US into another war" and that countries are "ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads." Medvedev made the remarks on Telegram, outlining his views on what the Trump administration's strikes on Iran would lead to moving forward. His comment came after the United States carried out attacks targeting three nuclear sites across the Persian Gulf nation—at Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. "The enrichment of nuclear material—and, now we can say it outright, the future production of nuclear weapons—will continue," Medvedev, a top ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, wrote in his Telegram post. "A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads." This is a developing story and will be updated with additional information.