BRUSSELS — When it comes to support for Ukraine, a split has emerged between the European Union and its English-speaking allies.

In France and Germany, the EU’s two biggest democracies, new polling shows that more respondents want their governments to scale back financial aid to Kyiv than to increase it or keep it the same. In the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, meanwhile, respondents tilt the other way and favor maintaining material support, according to The POLITICO Poll, which surveyed more than 10,000 people across the five countries earlier this month.

The findings land as European leaders prepare to meet in Brussels on Thursday for a high-stakes summit where providing financial support to Ukraine is expected to dominate the agenda. They also come as Washington seeks to mediate a peace agreement between Moscow and Kyiv — with German leader Friedrich Merz taking the lead among European nations on negotiating in Kyiv’s favor.

Across all five countries, the most frequently cited reason for supporting continued aid to Ukraine was the belief that nations should not be allowed to seize territory by force. The most frequently cited argument against additional assistance was concerns about the cost and the pressure on the national economy. 

“Much of our research has shown that the public in Europe feels the current era demands policy trade-offs, and financial support for Ukraine is no exception,” said Seb Wride, head of polling at Public First, an independent polling company headquartered in London that carried out the survey for POLITICO. 

“In a time where public finances are seen as finite resources, people’s interests are increasingly domestic,” he added. 

Western divide

Germans were the most reluctant to ramp up financial assistance, with nearly half of respondents (45 percent) in favor of cutting financial aid to Kyiv while only 20 percent wanted to increase it. In France 37 percent wanted to give less and 24 percent preferred giving more.

In contrast to the growing opposition to Ukrainian aid from Europe, support remains strikingly firm in North America. In the U.S., President Donald Trump has expressed skepticism toward Kyiv’s chances of defeating Moscow and has sent interlocutors to bargain with the Russians for peace. And yet the U.S. had the largest share of respondents (37 percent) in favor of increasing financial support, with Canada just behind at 35 percent.

Support for Ukraine was driven primarily by those who backed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 election in the U.S. Some 29 percent of Harris voters said one of the top three reasons the U.S. should support Ukraine was to protect democracy, compared with 17 percent of supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump.

“The partisan split in the U.S. is now quite extreme,” Wride said.

In Germany and France, opposition to assistance was especially pronounced among supporters of far-right parties — such as the Alternative for Germany and France’s National Rally — while centrists were less skeptical.

“How Ukraine financing plays out in Germany in particular, as a number of European governments face populist challenges, should be a particular warning sign to other leaders,” Wride said.

Refugee fatigue

Support for military assistance tracked a similar divide. Nearly 40 percent of respondents in the U.S., U.K. and Canada backed higher levels of military aid, with about 20 percent opposed.

In Germany 26 percent supported increased military aid to Ukraine while 39 percent opposed it. In France opinions were evenly split, with 31 percent favoring an increase and 30 percent favoring cuts.

Germany was also the only country where a majority of respondents said their government should accept fewer Ukrainians displaced by the war. 

In a country that has taken in more than a million Ukrainian refugees since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, 50 percent of Germans said Berlin should admit fewer. 

Half of respondents also said Germany should reduce support for Ukrainians already settled in the country — a sign that public fatigue is extending beyond weapons and budgets to the broader social and political pressures of the conflict.

The softer support for Ukraine in France and Germany does not appear to reflect warmer feelings toward Moscow, however. Voters in all five countries backed sanctions against Russia, suggesting that even where publics want to pare back aid they remain broadly aligned around punishing the aggressor and limiting Russia’s ability to finance the war.

This edition of The POLITICO Poll was conducted from Dec. 5 to Dec. 9 and surveyed 10,510 adults online, with at least 2,000 respondents each from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France and Germany. The results for each country were weighted to be representative in terms of age, gender and geography, and have an overall margin of sampling error of ±2 percentage points for each country. Smaller subgroups have higher margins of error.

The survey is an ongoing project from POLITICO and Public First, an independent polling company headquartered in London, to measure public opinion across a broad range of policy areas. You can find new surveys and analysis each month at politico.com/poll. Have questions or comments? Ideas for future surveys? Email us at poll@politico.com.