- October 3, 2026
- 4:17 pm
- World News
On October 2, 2026, Ukrainian publicist Valeriy Pekar wrote a rather biting column about Ukraine approaching a dangerous point. His formula is intentionally taken almost to the point of absurdity: if you gather the latest statements heard in different parts of the world, you might get a picture where Ukrainians have already ‘colonized’ Africa, armed North Korea, and are almost to blame for the war with Russia.
Author: Stas Shifer
Behind this irony, Pekar poses a very serious question. In 2014, and especially after the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, Ukraine managed to achieve something that is sometimes taken for granted: a huge part of the outside world understood what happened, who started the war, and who needs help. According to Pekar, today it is no longer possible to rely on the assumption that the once-formed attitude will be maintained automatically. He suggests gathering resources anew — from diplomacy and ambassadors to Ukrainian communities, journalists, public organizations, and friends of Ukraine in other countries.
And here it is worth pausing. Because if you set aside the journalistic sharpness, the problem does indeed exist. It just looks a bit more complicated than ‘the world has stopped supporting Ukraine.’
Europe has not turned away. But it’s no longer February 2022.
Let’s start with something that is easy to lose behind alarming headlines. Europe has not abandoned Ukraine.
The Spring Eurobarometer of 2026 showed: 76% of EU citizens agree that the European Union should continue to support Ukraine until a just and sustainable peace is achieved. Exactly the same number consider the Russian invasion a threat to the security of the EU itself. These are too large numbers to talk about any pan-European turn towards Moscow.
There has also been no global rehabilitation of Russia. In a Pew Research Center study conducted in 37 countries in the spring of 2026, a median of 59% of respondents viewed Russia negatively, and 65% did not trust Putin on international issues. In Europe, negative attitudes towards Russia remain particularly stable; in Canada, the USA, South Korea, Australia, Japan, and Israel, it is also widespread.
But in the same data, there is another figure, without which the picture becomes too convenient. A median of 52% of respondents in these 37 countries do not trust Zelensky, while 35% do. In Sweden, the UK, and the Netherlands, the level of trust remains high, but, for example, in Greece, Hungary, and Turkey, the picture is quite different.
That is, ‘negative attitude towards Russia’ and ‘unconditional trust in Ukraine’ can no longer be considered two sides of the same coin. A person may dislike Russia, distrust Putin — and at the same time look skeptically at Zelensky, the volume of aid to Kyiv, or the continuation of the war.
For information policy, this is a much more unpleasant construct than a simple choice ‘for Ukraine or for Russia.’
America has not split into two countries, but into two conversations about Ukraine.
The USA shows this particularly well.
In March 2026, 29% of Americans believed that Washington was not helping Ukraine enough. 26% called the level of support about right, 20% — excessive. The most interesting part begins within the parties: among Democrats, 50% wanted more support for Ukraine, among Republicans — only 11%.
This is no longer the political environment where it is enough to explain a few times that Russia invaded Ukraine. The very fact of the invasion has not disappeared from the consciousness of Americans, but other questions have grown around it: how much does it cost, how much does the war concern US security, how long will it continue, and who should pay for the next stage.
Government figures have also changed. According to ForeignAssistance.gov, analyzed by Pew, in the 2025 fiscal year, Ukraine received about $6.7 billion in American foreign aid. By July 2026, the database for the current fiscal year listed $214.4 million. Here a caveat is needed: this statistic does not cover all mechanisms of arms transfer and military support, so comparing the two figures as a complete American military balance is not possible. But the scale of the change in official payments is still noticeable.
Here Pekar’s thesis becomes clearer. The problem is not that Americans were suddenly convinced that Russia did not attack Ukraine. The problem is different: the explanation of 2022 no longer automatically answers the questions of 2026.
And then Africa appears — and Ukraine suddenly becomes a ‘colonizer.’
The strangest at first glance part of Pekar’s column concerns Africa. But it is here that his sarcasm has a very specific political background.
In September, Mali’s representative at the UN General Assembly accused Ukraine of supporting armed and terrorist groups in the Sahel. He called Ukraine the ‘visible part of the iceberg,’ which, according to Mali’s authorities, is trying to destabilize the country and prevent it from freeing itself from the ‘colonial yoke.’ These are accusations from the Mali government, not an established UN fact, but they are no longer spoken on Telegram or a marginal TV channel — they are voiced from the UN General Assembly podium.
A similar construct was voiced by Niger. Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamin Zein accused France of trying to destabilize the central Sahel, and Ukraine of ‘active complicity.’ He spoke of armed groups allegedly preparing attacks on military facilities and Niger’s oil infrastructure. Independent evidence of these specific accusations was not presented; Ukraine previously denied similar statements.
For an Israeli reader, the Sahel is a vast belt of states south of the Sahara, where in recent years there have been coups, wars with jihadist groups, the displacement of French influence, and simultaneously the strengthening of ties of some regimes with Russia. Therefore, the word ‘colonialism’ there has a completely different political weight than in the European discussion.
And it is into this already existing anti-colonial narrative that they are now trying to fit Ukraine.
Not all of Africa. Not all African governments. But it is enough to voice this construct several times at the level of heads of state and the UN General Assembly for part of the local audience to start seeing Russia’s war against Ukraine quite differently than it is perceived in Warsaw, Berlin, or Kyiv.
This is what information warfare does with geography: the same state in one part of the world is a victim of invasion, while in another it is already being tried to fit into a story about European neocolonialism.
Pekar recalls Georgia — and here is an unpleasant lesson.
In his column, Pekar cites the 2008 Russia-Georgia war as an example of how long a simple version of a complex conflict can persist.
The European independent commission, created after that war, indeed concluded that open large-scale hostilities began with the Georgian military operation against Tskhinvali on the night of August 7-8. But the same report emphasized that the war cannot be explained only by that night: it was preceded by years of provocations, violence, and growing tension, and Russian forces then advanced deep into Georgian territory.
Over the years, this entire construct easily compresses into one sentence: ‘Georgia started the war.’
This is how complex historical material turns into a stable political label. Not necessarily completely false. Sometimes it is much more effective to take one confirmed episode, pull it out of the entire chain of events, and make it the explanation for the entire conflict.
For Ukraine, this is a much more realistic danger than the fantasy that one day the whole world will suddenly believe in the absence of a Russian invasion.
An embassy cannot be replaced by a Facebook post.
Another phrase from Pekar sounds almost mundane: appoint absent ambassadors.
But there are numbers behind it too.
According to the official response of the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as of November 14, 2025, ambassador positions remained vacant in 19 countries: Belarus, Brazil, Armenia, Ghana, Greece, Georgia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, South Korea, Côte d’Ivoire, Latvia, Mauritania, Panama, Thailand, Tanzania, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. At the same time, in the same year, Ukraine conducted a large diplomatic rotation and appointed dozens of new heads of foreign missions.
In June 2026, Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha said that the remaining vacancies were planned to be filled by the summer meeting of ambassadors. But on August 19, the issue resurfaced in the Verkhovna Rada: there, in particular, a remark was made about Armenia, ‘where there has been no ambassador for years.’ Therefore, it cannot be claimed that the same 19 positions remain vacant in the fall, but the personnel problem itself has not disappeared instantly.
And here no theories about propaganda are required. When a state does not have a full-fledged head of the Ukrainian diplomatic mission, a local politician, journalist, or official will still receive an explanation of what is happening. The only question is — from whom.
South Korea showed another problem: sometimes the conflict is created by the communication itself.
And it’s not always about Russian propaganda.
A very fresh example appeared literally on the eve of Pekar’s column publication. South Korean President Lee Jae-myung on October 2 threatened Ukraine with ‘additional measures’ due to a conflict over two North Korean servicemen captured by Ukrainians while fighting on Russia’s side and then handed over to Seoul.
Zelensky publicly announced this transfer during a speech at the UN. The South Korean side stated that there was an agreement on confidentiality, necessary, among other things, to protect the servicemen themselves. The Ukrainian side denied the existence of such an agreement. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha called the incident a diplomatic misunderstanding, but Seoul demanded recognition of the agreement and a public apology.
What is important here is not even the rightness of one side — it remains the subject of their dispute.
What is important is how quickly the story of two North Korean soldiers turned from a potential symbol of Russian-North Korean cooperation into a conflict between Ukraine and a state that itself provides Ukraine with financial and humanitarian aid.
Sometimes an information problem arises not because the opponent invented an effective fake. It is enough for two partners to understand differently what can be said publicly.
NANews — News of Israel | Nikk.Agency constantly faces the same boundary in their own work: between what really happened, how one side explains the event, and what conclusion the audience already draws from it. In international politics, the distance between these three points is sometimes measured by one unfortunate statement.
Israel: sympathy after tragedy is not granted forever.
And here appears the closest example for us.
Pekar writes about Israel after October 7, 2023, and believes that the country almost immediately lost the information war. If understood literally, the picture was more complex.
In an Economist/YouGov poll from October 21–24, 2023, 41% of Americans said they sympathized more with Israelis, and only 13% with Palestinians. A week earlier, the gap was even larger: 48% versus 10%. So even two weeks after the Hamas attack, American public opinion clearly did not look like an environment where Israel had already lost everything.
But if instead of three weeks, you look at three years, Pekar’s parallel becomes much more interesting.
In the spring of 2026, Pew surveyed residents of 36 countries. A median of 67% viewed Israel negatively, positively — 25%. In the USA, negative attitudes were 60%, in Germany — 73%, in the UK — 69%, in Italy — 75%, in Spain and Sweden — 78% each. In 13 out of 24 countries where comparable data for 2025 was available, negative attitudes towards Israel grew statistically significantly.
Reducing all this to one thesis ‘Israel poorly explained itself’ would be too convenient. Attitudes towards the country were influenced by the duration of the war, IDF actions in Gaza, the number of civilian casualties, the humanitarian situation, the Israeli government’s policy, international investigations, protests, media coverage, and internal political polarization in the Western countries themselves.
But one lesson is visible here without any slogans: initial international sympathy after a severe attack is not a perpetual political asset.
Circumstances change, the audience changes, questions change. And after a few years, a state finds itself answering a completely different question than the one it was asked in the first month of the war.
For Israel, Ukraine is also no longer just a distant war.
This story has another layer that is not always noticeable to the Ukrainian audience.
The Israeli conversation about Ukraine itself is changing. In 2022, Jerusalem primarily proceeded from the Russian military presence in Syria and the need to maintain freedom of action against Iranian forces. Israel helped Ukraine humanitarianly, opened the ‘Kohav Meir’ field hospital, transferred protective equipment, but did not supply Kyiv with its own air defense systems.
In the fall of 2026, opposition leader Yair Lapid is already publicly formulating a different connection: ‘Russia is an ally of Iran,’ and therefore, in his position, Israel’s relations with Ukraine should become closer. NANews analyzed this logic in detail and his words that upon returning to power, his political camp intends to do more for Ukraine than in 2022. This is Lapid’s position, not the official policy of the current Israeli government. Yair Lapid on Ukraine: ‘Russia is an ally of Iran’
On October 1, Knesset member Gilad Kariv, after the funeral in Tel Aviv of 14-year-old Israeli Daniel Umansky, who died in a Russian attack on Kyiv, wrote quite directly: ‘Israel must stand on the side of Ukrainian citizens.’ And again, it is important not to turn the statement of an opposition deputy into the position of the state. But the Ukrainian topic itself is increasingly entering the internal Israeli discussion through its own Israeli interests, the lives of citizens, and Russia’s relations with Iran. Gilad Kariv: ‘Israel must stand on the side of Ukrainian citizens’
There is also a completely practical level. Ukraine’s experience in cheap detection and interception of drones is of interest to Israel not out of a sense of solidarity, but because Iranian Shahed and other UAVs have long been part of the Middle Eastern war. NANews separately analyzed which elements of the Ukrainian anti-drone system could be useful to Israel and why this is not about copying someone else’s air defense, but about exchanging combat experience. Ukrainian ‘anti-drone ingenuity’ against Iranian swarms
That is, Ukraine in Israel also needs to explain itself differently than four years ago. Not only through Bucha, Mariupol, and the right of the state to defend itself. A new set of questions has appeared here: Russia and Iran, drones, technologies, Israelis in Ukraine, Ukrainians in Israel, Jewish communities, and Israel’s own security.
The most dangerous mistake is to decide that the world has already understood everything once.
Pekar ends his column with a proposal to gather Ukrainian external communication resources anew. One can argue about the methods, but the factual picture explains why this conversation arose at all.
In Europe, there is still very high support for Ukraine. Russia continues to evoke predominantly negative attitudes in many countries. But at the same time, attitudes towards Zelensky have become much more heterogeneous, the American discussion is divided along party lines, in the Sahel, Ukraine’s name is already being linked with colonialism, and the diplomatic conflict with South Korea shows how easily relations can be spoiled even where Russia is not the main narrator at all.
This is not yet Ukraine’s information defeat. The data does not support such a conclusion.
But another era has ended — the one in which it was possible to assume that the events of February 2022 explained everything once and for all.
Four and a half years later, each country is asking its own question again.
A European — how much longer will the war last and can the EU bear its cost. An American — why exactly should the United States continue to pay. A resident of a Sahel state may hear a story not about Bucha, but about ‘neocolonialism.’ South Korea suddenly discusses not the Russian invasion, but a breach of confidentiality. An Israeli increasingly looks at Ukraine through Iran, Shahed, Russian-Iranian cooperation, and its own security.
And perhaps this is where the most important thought of this whole story lies.
Information warfare is not a competition of who can repeat the same correct phrase louder. It is a struggle for what question a person even asks before they hear the answer.
In 2022, for a huge part of the world, the question was: ‘Why did Russia attack Ukraine?’
In the fall of 2026, there are many more questions.
And if Ukraine does not participate in these new conversations, there will still be no empty space there.
