Abstract
The Ukrainian crisis has significantly shifted public opinion against Russia and Putin, placing politicians with prior Russian ties in a precarious situation. This paper tracks how parties that had some affinity to Putin have pivoted after the outbreak of war. Through computational text analysis of a decade of Facebook posts from 11 European radical right parties, we investigate their stance evolution towards Russia and their strategic management of public sentiment and Russian relationships. The results show that most radical right parties, after the invasion, neither tried to remain pro-Russia nor focussed their attention on shifting their prior position. Instead, they engaged in blurring the issue, diverting attention away from the war and using the events in Ukraine to assert their anti-EU positions.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Number of pages | 25 |
| Journal | European Union Politics |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 14 Mar 2025 |
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the European Research Council under the Synergy Grant number 810356 (ERC_SYG_2018), in the scope of the project SOLID \u2013 Policy Crisis and Crisis Politics, Sovereignty, Solidarity and Identity in the EU post-2008 and by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) under the Starter Grant, in the scope of the project NEST - Navigating the Storm: European Political Contestation in Geopolitical Transformation.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap | |
| European Research Council | 810356, ERC_SYG_2018 |
| European Commission | post-2008 |