A representative survey commissioned by the Munich Security Conference for its annual report found that the vast majority of Ukrainians would keep fighting the Russian invasion even in the event of a nuclear strike and see Crimea as indispensable, Tagesspiegel reported.
Committed to have an idea of how Ukrainians themselves view escalation risks, ceasefire conditions, and long-term security guarantees, it found that Ukrainians view the very factors that are decisive for shaping German policy towards Russia — i.e. risk of an escalation — very differently than Germans.
Particularly, “respondents in Ukraine are surprisingly unperturbed by Moscow’s threats, even though the people there would be the first victims of a Russian nuclear strike.”
“A Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons is no reason for the overwhelming majority to stop the resistance. 89% of those surveyed said they would continue to fight even in the event of a nuclear attack on a Ukrainian city. Apparently, they weight the risk associated with giving way significantly higher than a possible nuclear escalation,” Tagesspiegel writes.