Wang Chendi, Altiparmakis Argyrios
Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Department of Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute, Fiesole, Italy.
Eur Union Polit. 2025 Jun;26(2):393-417. doi: 10.1177/14651165251321802. Epub 2025 Mar 14.
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.
乌克兰危机极大地改变了公众对俄罗斯和普京的看法，使与俄罗斯有过往关联的政客陷入了岌岌可危的境地。本文追踪了那些曾对普京有一定好感的政党在战争爆发后的转变。通过对11个欧洲极右翼政党十年来脸书帖子的计算文本分析，我们研究了它们对俄罗斯的立场演变以及对公众情绪和俄关系的战略管理。结果表明，大多数极右翼政党在入侵事件发生后，既没有试图保持亲俄立场，也没有将注意力集中在改变其先前立场上。相反，它们对该问题进行模糊处理，将注意力从战争上转移开，并利用乌克兰事件来宣扬其反欧盟立场。
