Vladimir putin’s invasion of Ukraine has united the West in condemnation. Governments have supplied Ukraine with arms and co-ordinated crippling sanctions against Russia. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest against the invasion. But new polling data from The Economist and YouGov suggest a generational divide in opinions about the war.

Ninety-two per cent of American respondents over the age of 64 said they sympathised more with Ukraine than with Russia. Yet just 56% of those aged 18-29 answered the same—a difference of 36 percentage points. In Europe the pattern looks similar. There was a 17-point difference between the shares of older and younger people in Britain who said they sympathise more with Ukraine, and a gap of 14 points in France. Young Americans were the most likely to say they sympathised more with Russia (10%), compared with 6% in France and just 1% in Britain.

The generational gap in the poll was even more pronounced when pollsters asked whether Russia was deliberately striking civilian areas in Ukraine. Ninety-one per cent of Americans aged over 65 answered “yes”, compared with just 47% of respondents under 30. The younger generation was more split in its answer: 20% did not believe civilians were being targeted and 33% “aren’t sure”. Older individuals in Britain and France were more likely to answer that Russia was targeting civilians than younger generations, but by a narrower margin (18 and 7 percentage points, respectively).

What explains this divide? One reason is that, on average, younger people tend to be less engaged in politics. Across all three countries, younger people who said that they were interested in politics were more sympathetic to Ukraine than their less-engaged peers. In Britain the gap between those aged under 30 and over 64 narrowed when factoring in that difference: from 17 points to 12.

In France younger respondents who said they have an interest in politics were also more sympathetic to Ukraine. Interestingly, the reverse is true for the older cohort. Well-informed French respondents older than 65 were 15 percentage points less likely to be sympathetic to Ukraine than their younger counterparts. This may reflect a lingering sympathy for Russia among some older French people, linked to France’s cold-war posture of geo-strategic independence.

But in America, a lack of political engagement can explain only part of the generational divide. The gap between well-informed older Americans and well-informed younger Americans is still wide, at 28 percentage points. Russophobic sentiment among older adults may be more important. Those aged 65 and older came of age in the midst of the cold war. By comparison, those aged under 30 were born after 1992, a year after the fall of the Soviet Union. As Russia returns to battle, echoes of the cold war might ring louder for older generations. ■

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