While those populists with pro-Russian leanings have been marginalized, those who have moderated and come out in support of Ukraine have been welcomed back into the fold, despite having spent years undermining democracy at home.

For example, before the Russian invasion, Polish President Andrzej Duda was receiving a cold shoulder just about everywhere in the West. Yet his staunch support of Ukraine has turned him into a key participant in major transatlantic and European meetings, and an important partner to anti-populist Western politicians, not least US President Joe Biden.

At the same time, Duda himself has become less populist. Never an independent thinker or politician, he now takes his cues from the American embassy, rather than from Law and Justice (PiS) party leader Jarosław Kaczyński, to whom he owes his current position. Duda seems to have concluded that Kaczyński cannot hope to reward him with the kind of international profile that the Americans can.

Meanwhile, pro-Russian populists have fallen out of favor almost everywhere. [...]

While individual populists have either moderated their positions or been marginalized, the broader "populist international" has become more fractured with the loss of its Russian patron. Western politicians can no longer walk around in pro-Putin t-shirts, as the Italian nationalist leader Matteo Salvini once did, or borrow money from Russian banks, as the French right-wing leader Marine Le Pen's party has done. Pro-Russian and anti-NATO views are no longer acceptable. In 2022, the German pro-Russian parties Alternative für Deutschland and Die Linke lost local elections across the board.

Populists also suffered losses in elections in the United States and France, and Russia's war of aggression was certainly one reason. Candidates backed by former US President Donald Trump - an open admirer of Putin - were roundly defeated in the US midterms. And in the French presidential and parliamentary elections last spring, Le Pen and the left-wing leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon's sympathies for Russia did not go unnoticed. If the pro-Russian populist former Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš loses this week's presidential election to Petr Pavel, the former head of NATO's Military Committee, that, too, will be partly because of Russia's war.