Russia no longer perceived as top threat by Germans

Russia is showing no signs it plans to wind down its unprovoked assault on Ukraine two years after launching a full-scale invasion — but Germans now view issues like migration and the threat from radical Islam as more immediate concerns than the menace in the Kremlin.

That’s according to new research published Monday ahead of the Munich Security Conference, a gathering of top political and defense officials which kicks off in Germany on Friday.

While Russia was perceived as the number one threat in Germany in last year’s Munich Security Index, it has now slipped back to seventh place in the annual report.

The pattern is replicated across the G7 group of countries — the threat posed by Russia was cited as the top concern in surveys conducted in late 2022 for the 2023 Munich Security Index, but has dropped to fourth overall a year later.

The findings come at a crucial moment in the war, as Ukraine seeks to shore up European support as the United States’ commitment to the war effort falters due to continuing Republican opposition in the U.S. Congress.

The European Union agreed a  €50 billion aid package for Kyiv earlier this month, but there's already evidence it’s insufficient as Ukraine’s financial needs grow by the day.

The survey’s conclusion that the German public is less concerned by the Russian threat than it once was is a sign of the shifting priorities in Europe as the intractable war enters its third year.

While Ukraine has inflicted significant damage on the Russian army since the war began, its 2023 counteroffensive made slow progress. In a bid to reset his country’s military strategy, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy replaced his top general Valery Zaluzhny last week with Oleksandr Syrskyi, and embarked on a wider leadership reshuffle.

The war in Ukraine is expected to dominate this year’s Munich Security Conference. Though it has not been confirmed, Zelenskyy himself is widely expected to make an appearance — two years after he flew to Munich to make a desperate plea for international help at the conference just days before Russia's full-scale invasion began.

The Munich Security Index 2024 also reveals how the war in Ukraine is competing with other geopolitical threats and priorities.

Concern about mass migration and radical Islamic terrorism now top the list of threats in Germany — a turnaround from the previous year.

The threat posed by radical Islamic terrorism jumped to second place, compared to 16th last year. Mass migration as a result of war or climate change, which came in second last year, now ranks sits at number one. The authors of the report attribute the trends to the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, noting the survey was undertaken in October and November last year.

“As in many other countries, the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7 appears to have prompted a spike in German concern about radical Islamic terrorism,” the report notes, adding that “Germany now has the highest level of concern about migration among the countries surveyed.”

The survey, which interviewed 12,000 people last fall, also provides a bleak insight into the thinking of many of the world’s wealthiest countries. Large parts of the populations in G7 nations believe their countries will be less secure and wealthy in 10 years’ time, the report states. But the prospects for the so-called BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — are judged more positively by their populations.

A whopping 72 percent of the world's population now lives in autocracies, compared to 46 percent a decade ago.