Final Word from Thursday, December 28, 2023

A survey by Median for Czech Radio found that 72% of respondents don't expect a peace agreement in Ukraine next year. It didn't ask what people want to happen there, unlike an earlier survey, but rather what they thought would happen. This is a rather big distinction. So far the assumption has been that Ukraine would have the West's backing for as long as it took to regain all of its territory, but there is now a shift toward accepting that Ukraine might not win the war and that steps must be taken to salvage as much as possible. Those who wanted peace all along have sometimes been referred to derogatorily in Czech as chcimírové, which translates into English as peacewanters. A better term in English is peacenik, which coincidentally uses the Russian suffix -nik. It was used during the Vietnam war to mock those who protested against the fighting. It's rarely used now because of the realization that those being mocked turned out to be basically right about the futility of the war in Vietnam. [ Czech Republic opinion poll agency Russia neologism pacifist ]