A Ukrainian polling institution claims that 86.6 percent of Russians agree and support a potential attack on the territory of European Union countries, including: Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic or Slovakia.
The survey, conducing by the Active Group, was conducted by Ukrainian sociologists on March 11-14, 2022 using the CATI method (computer-assisted telephone interview). A total of 1,557 respondents from Russia were interviewed. The margin of error is, according to the institute, between 0.95 and 2.5 percent.
“A feature of this project was that the calls were made using the Viber application, and the interviewers did not show up saying they were calling from Ukraine. At the same time, they used temporary numbers for calls (the numbers were purchased through virtual number sales),” explained the Ukrainians Active Group regarding the methodology of the survey.
The fact that this survey was released from a Ukrainian polling institute cannot be overlooked given the fact that Ukraine and Russia are currently at war.
The interviews revealed that 75.5 percent of Russians approve of the idea of an armed invasion of another country, after Ukraine, and believe that this should be Poland. From the respondents’ point of view, it is a logical continuation of the “special military operation of the Russian Federation.”
Moreover, according to the survey, 74.5 percent of respondents agree to some extent with the use of nuclear weapons by their country’s government.
Given a selection of countries the freely chose from as a next potential invasion target, those polled put Poland first (75.5 percent of respondents), the Baltic countries, i.e. Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia (41 percent), as well as Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary (39.6 percent).
Only 25.5 percent of Russians have a categorically negative attitude towards the use of nuclear weapons. Of those surveyed, 40.3 percent consider a nuclear attack absolutely acceptable, and 34.3% percent will support to some degree such a decision by the Russian authorities.
