a German perspective: the role of western countries/Germany in supporting a partly crime organization has never been discussed broadly. The image is still: we are the west. We are good. So is what we did. Putin is evil. He must change his behaviour because he is doing wrong.
That is the press echo.
On the other hand you now have people in the street here in Germany, demonstrating (PEGIDA). And one of their founding statements was: stop pushing towards war and escalation with Russia.
And on the topic of Russia, there is a fierce debate going on of media accusing the public of being an organized mob against media on exactly this topic, Ukraine.
It went so far that some newspapers changed their policies on user comments or closed them.
But I see little change in perspective. It has been like that for a while.
could be a fun thread.
Yeah, as a middle-eastern I also support PEGIDA. People say they are nazis and anti-muslims but I think they just don't want refugees and people from different cultures who won't agree with lots of stuff in their country. They also don't want western powers' support for armed groups. They always support rebel groups in middle-east which turn out to be terrorists (surprise surprise). It happened like this with Al-Qaeda, Libya, Syria etc. EU and U.S. should've push for negotiations between Crimeans, Russians and Ukrainians; not for a new cold war. But you know, nobody cares about people who just happen to be live in those countries. Nobody cares about civilians, political successes and peace. Europe shouldn't alienate Russia, cold war ended 20 years ago.