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From Russia with War:The Russia-Ukraine Conflict and NATO Resurgence (with Federico Curci)
We exploit the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine as a shock to the anti-Russiaattitudes in Spain. We collect data from multiple sources: the Spanish NATO refer-endum of 1986, monthly public opinion surveys with voting and pro-war attitudes,and the universe of political speeches in the Spanish Congress. Using differentempirical strategies we robustly identify the effect of the invasion on domesticpolitics. The three main results are the following: we show that the Russia-Ukraineconflict increased by around 5 percentage points the current intention to vote forthe main center-right party (Partido Popular–PP) among the individuals in themunicipalities that strongly supported NATO in the 1986 referendum. Similarly, inthose municipalities, individuals have lower “sympathy” for Russia and a strongerperception of the country as a military threat. Finally, the increase in the votingintention for the PP goes hand in hand with the legislators’ narrative in Congress:after the invasion, PP legislators are more likely to mention Russia in their speeches,and when they do, they talk more negatively about it.