In NATO We Trust(?): The Russian Invasion of Ukraine and EU27 Citizens’ Trust in NATO

Abstract Institutional trust is trust in state’s institutions and organizations. Institutional trust also involves trust towards international and intergovernmental organizations such as the UN, the EU and NATO. Institutional trust includes citizens’ trust towards the national security apparatus or security providing organizations such as NATO. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine is a major event with wide-ranging momentous political, economic and strategic ramifications. The latter affect European states’ security and defence. Such important events impact citizens’ risk-perceptions (in)security sentiments and hence their trust towards institutions assigned with the task of providing security. The paper examines how the Russian invasion has affected European citizens’ trust towards NATO. To probe into the issue, it uses data from two Eurobarometer surveys. A survey that took place just before the invasion in January and February 2022 and a survey that took place in June and July. A similar to regression discontinuity empirical setup is adopted to examine how European citizens’ trust towards NATO was impacted by the invasion. The empirical findings reported herein are not uniform across all EU member-countries and indicate noteworthy differences on trust towards NATO as a result of the Russian invasion. Nonetheless, on balance, a statistically significant effect is traced by the estimated regressions.