Description
Before the Ukraine war, some scholars noted that Russian regime not only used propaganda and disinformation, but also had soft power attraction among growing members of populist and far-right/left groups across the Western states. For many analysts, however, the invasion of Ukraine marked the end of this type of influence, with predictions that those populists who openly supported the values projected by the Russian regime, and therein Russian foreign policy, had made a politically fatal mistake. This paper, alternatively, suggests that the war in Ukraine was has not marked the end of Russian conservative soft power in the West, showing that although the war did effect its overall strength, the continued pull of conservative values projected by the Russian regime is still a concern not only for the successful Ukrainian prosecution of the war, but the continued stability of liberal international projects.
