How Indian Public opinion on Ukraine war changed — A detailed analysis by u/Fdsn

I had written this as a comment in Europe subreddit. But then people liked it and wanted me to post here too. Hence this post.

I am an Indian guy who has been interested in geopolitics and international relations for the past 15 years. I am very passionate about it and read news from around the world, thus I understand the sentiments across the world. I read Indian, American, British, Chinese, and Pakistani news on a daily basis, and a bit of European news occasionally. So, I believe I can give you a detailed response.

But I know this is a sensitive topic for many Europeans, and people tend to get emotional rather than logical, so read only if you are in the mood to read a rational opinion with an open mind, as it may not align with the general opinion in your media. I don’t have a horse in this race.

The public sentiment in India was highly supportive of Ukraine when the war started. People were condemning Russia in all media. It was considered an unprovoked aggression, which most people were against. It was also seen as a large country invading a small country, thus the David and Goliath sentiment of supporting the underdog was seen everywhere.

Then it slowly started to turn when videos started popping up on social media of Indian medical students being systematically racially discriminated against in Ukraine when they were trying to escape the country. Everywhere preferences were given to people of specific skin color.

UN Votes

There were also scenes of Indians not being allowed to cross the border as some sort of bargaining chip. And a Ukrainian diplomat in the UN speaking in a language that can be considered undiplomatic when India asked for help to get her students out. The UN diplomat of Ukraine was talking in an uncaring manner in a way that can be misunderstood as purposefully keeping students as hostages to get Indian government support. At the same time, Russian diplomats were talking in a caring attentive way, and even said they would do the rescue from their side, which I don’t know if it happened or not, but all these videos were watched by the public, and opinions can get formed from there.

Then came the news of various western countries condemning India for abstaining and not voting against Russia in the UN. This is the same UN where 5 countries enjoy veto power to do whatever the heck they want. India does not have this veto power; thus, we had to always buy this power from someone.

The only reliable country that has consistently helped India with Veto is Russia. If we vote against them, they simply do not give a veto the next time we need it. And, if we assume one other country like France sells us their VETO usage rights, then without Russia, we will become dependent on a single entity, and as you know, a monopoly increases cost and reliance. If you want to see India vote independently in the UN against a country that gives veto to India, then you need to either remove this veto system or give veto to India.

Anyway, then there was social media outrage against India by many Europeans and Americans. And this is when the opinion really started to change in India from “full support to Ukraine” to “indifference” as it felt like western powers were forcing India, and no one likes to be lectured to.

Even on Reddit, under every post about India, there would be comments like “sanction India” and much worse things, and slowly these things started to make people think “maybe there is a different side of the story.”

Hypocrisy

Then active social media people started doing their research, and facts about Ukraine-India relations started popping up. Ukraine’s support to Pakistan in Kargil war against India in 1999. Ukraine’s supply of weapons, including tanks to Pakistan etc.

A few weeks ago, Ukraine’s Chair of Committee on Foreign Policy Oleksandr Merezhko suggested the imposition of sanctions on India during his visit to the US.

These things change opinions, and people have gone from “Oh no, slava Ukraine” to “Yet another US-Russia proxy war”. How is this any different from the Iraq war, Vietnam war, or the ongoing Yemen war?

The hypocrisy of the participating countries is what hurts the most. Azerbaijan is invading Armenia, and none of these countries are helping Armenia, where extreme cruelty to Armenian civilians and soldiers is happening against the Geneva Convention. Instead, they are supporting Azerbaijan and buying their oil and gas.

International relations have always been about big powerful countries bullying smaller countries for thousands of years. Those with power rule, and others obey. When they don’t obey or change allegiance, there is a war. This is not at all fair, but it is reality.

When Cuba wanted to keep some missiles, it was the Cuban Missile Crisis and deserved to be invaded. But when Ukraine, which is literally bordering Russia on flat plains, wants to keep the entire NATO force within striking range of Moscow, it is not a crisis?

The reality is that Ukraine’s politicians are dumb or have been bought out by foreign powers to act dumb. They have never acted in the best interest of their country. All they needed to do was to play the politics of small to medium countries and play the neutral double game trying to win favors from both Russia and the West. This is what all countries of that power range do.

In this particular case, the Russian demand was that they do not join NATO. They could have agreed to it. And then Russia would have looked dumb and would not have invaded. Now, wait 7–10 years until either Putin dies or new power comes, then at an opportune time when Russia is weak, join NATO. This is what any sensible small to medium country would do.

Was it worth going into direct war for this simple statement? Or playing politics for 10 years and doing it at the right time?

There were a lot of chances to prevent this war, but no one seemed interested. And no one really cares about the people of Ukraine. It has always been about the political powers fighting each other for other reasons, and this is what hurts me.

Winners and Losers

Loser #1

The biggest loser of this war is Ukraine obviously. 18 million people fled the country out of a population of 43 million. Many of them will never return, a few million returned, 5 million is refugee in Europe. The remaining staying back in Ukraine are majorly male-population who was banned from leaving, the elderly and the poor. Even if the war gets over in the favour of Ukraine, it is doomed for the next century with that kind of population decline.

At least 100,000 of their soldiers either got killed or got severely injured. And most of their military equipment is lost, and new equipment is brought from foreign countries on loan. Many of the cities have become unlivable. They lost an estimated $349 Billion worth of infrastructure, and potentially trillions of dollars in long-term loss over the next few decades.

Loser #2

The second biggest loser is Russia. They lost their international reputation. One of their main exports were weapons and buyers have now lost confidence in their weapons, which will potentially cost them 100s of billions in future loss. They also have to sell their family jewel of top secret technologies that very few countries have knowledge of to make any further weapon sales. They also got isolated internationally with sanctions and trade problems everywhere.

At least 100,000 of their soldiers either got killed or got severely injured. They lost large amount of their huge stockpile of accumulated weapons they had from 1960s. And their threat factor thus lost influence in many places.

Their neighbouring countries like Finaland and Sweden who has usually stayed neutral is now applying for NATO and they are now geopolitically surrounded by NATO.

Loser #3

The third biggest loser is pretty much all countries in Europe. Their currency fell massively, they became dependent on America, their industries lost competitiveness and they are forced to spend billions in defence. I will keep it short here as I have mentioned more points below.

Other Losers

The fourth biggest losers are small countries with weak economies like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Srilanka, Ghana, Suriname and most African countries. All of them are in deep trouble due to sudden inflation and high price of oil/gas. And literally every country in the world is struggling with inflation and high oil prices!

The fifth biggest loser is India and China. Even though we have been able to buy oil and stabilize a bit, but still our oil price increased massively over past 3 years. There is inflation increase too. And now with weakened Russia, it has become dependent on China, which is bad for India to have its arm supplier starting to become a puppet of China in the future.

Even though China got this advantage, their benefit is negated by the fact that now every country is spending billions in defence, thus once sleepy countries are now becoming defence powers, thus forcing China to increase their defence too. Europe, Japan, Australia, South East Asian countries, All of them have made their highest defence budget in past 50+ years.

Winners

The second biggest winner are the Oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia who was facing fund crunch due to their massive construction projects. Now they can sell oil for a premium price. Do you know how they do that? They simply REDUCE oil production, and since they ask all producers to increase price. This is a real cartel that the entire world accepts because of our next winner.

The biggest winner of this war is America. During Covid, America printed trillions of dollars and handed them out to people and businesses as support. Now, if any country printed money like that, it would cause high inflation. But America is an exception since their currency is used around the world. So their inflation gets exported to everyone around the world.

But even better, do you know what rich investors do when there is a global crisis? They panic and convert their wealth to gold and dollars as they are considered safe. Out of this, Dollar is their main choice as it is more liquid. Thus, it is possible to not only export inflation to other countries but also profit from it. And just like that during the Ukraine war, wealthy people and companies around the world converted their money to USD. Thus, instead of the US experiencing inflation, their currency bloomed while all other currencies went down. This is the primary reason why your currency fell, no matter which country you live in.

Secondly, NATO was an alliance that most countries, who are part of it, took for granted, such as not buying the required percentage of GDP as weapons mandated in the NATO agreement. It was an alliance made in 1950s against a threat that no longer exists, thus NATO was an alliance without a purpose since dissolution of USSR in 1991. Thirty years without a purpose was making countries starting to think about even leaving this.

There was even an attempt by Europe to form its own alliance or common European military. This war not only made all these countries take NATO seriously, but they also increased their military budget by a huge percentage. And who are they going to buy at least a good amount of those weapons from?

Thirdly, Germany was starting to play an influential role in Europe independent of what the US wants, and the Euro was becoming a prominent international trade currency. Europeans had even started to dictate rules to American companies like forcing Apple to make USB-C mandatory, or Fining Google $4billion dollar. How dare you fine an American company?

This influence EU gained in past few years has now been reduced. Apart from that, the industries in Europe has now been crippled by higher energy prices and taxes to fund the additional defence expense. This is why initially Germany was so reluctant to get involved as German politicians knew all of these.

Fourthly, globally, for most countries, the weapon choice historically has been either American or Soviet. Now, all these countries can’t choose Russian weapons due to sanctions and also the reputation of Russian weapons has gone down among general public after seeing their real performance in a war.

Fifthly, people were making fun of American military for their loss in Afghanistan. And they had become the butt of all memes, but more importantly, American military complex needed a new war to continue their growth.

Sixthly and most importantly, the reason why the dollar is the main trade currency of the world is that the US has forced all oil-selling countries to sell oil in dollars only. They are not even allowed to sell in their own currency like Riyal or Dinnar. If a country tries to sell oil in any other currency, they either get invaded, sanctioned, or a civil war happens. So, the root of dollar supremacy is oil, and the US controls this to the maximum.

The only country that the US had no control over that was selling oil is Russia. Now that is also highly restricted. Venunzula is sanctioned and in civil war. Iran is sanctioned. Yemen is in war. Iraq was invaded and now in shambles. Libya is in civil war. All other countries that sell oil are part of OPEC cartel except for a few like Norway but they are anyway subservient to US needs.

Contrary to popular belief, the US does not need oil from other countries. The US is pretty self-sufficient now in oil. But the only issue is that this oil is more expensive to extract than it is in oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia or Iran. So, increasing oil prices are good for the US as it makes their oil production profitable. And this is also an American gift to oil producing countries who sell oil in American terms, that is, SELL ONLY IN DOLLAR.

The reason every country including Russia/Iran/China/N.Korea is forced to sell anything and everything in dollars is because of oil being sold in dollar. Now, every country that does not have oil have to earn dollar. And the main way to do that is by selling their exports in dollars. Then they can use this to buy oil in dollar. As long as dollar is the supreme currency, US do not have to worry about money at all as they can print it as much as they want whenever they need, ofcourse to a very high limit. Its like free money, but paid by everyone except america.

Conclusion

This war made Europeans once again fully dependent on America, instead of a Europe that had slowly started to become a competitor of America. This decreased the wealth of Europe while increasing that of America. The game played by America is so good here that it won in every way possible without firing a single bullet. And their real opponents are cheering for them and not even realizing they have been conned! What a genius play!

And historically, America became America because of the two world wars that destroyed the entire world but made America rich as it propped up lot of industries to make weapons and sell it to Europe. And ultimately this allowed them to set dollar as the international currency. This war is mere duplication of that American success for the third time.

The European politicians know this, and this is why powerful countries like Germany and France were hesitant at first in joining the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

But democracy is such that it can be manipulated to great extent using media and thus politicians can’t do anything, and here no manipulation is even necessary, because common people know war is bad, invader is bad, Hitler is bad, putin is hitler. Look at even the first address of US about the Ukraine war, and you will see American president repeatedly say “Putin’s war” instead of “Russia-Ukraine war”. And you will see this word gets repeated everywhere. This is just one of the examples of how world powers continue to dominate the world.

If the majority of people could learn and analyze situations to this depth, Europeans will be deeply upset at US for playing this sneaky game against them indirectly. This is the actual game, and it didn’t sour relations, did it? The only politicians in Europe who had the capability to see and play this game were authoritarian ones who did play disregarding public opinion for their own benefits, like Turkey trying to gain some benefit out of this, but they too were not powerful enough to go against this kindof master-play by US.

Link to the original Reddit post : https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaSpeaks/comments/11f0zxw/how_indian_public_opinion_on_ukraine_war_changed/ by u/Fdsn