Poles hold the most negative views of Russia among all countries included in a new global survey by the Pew Research Center, which also shows that attitudes towards the United States, NATO and the European Union are the most positive ever recorded in Poland.
Only 2% of Poles hold a favourable view of Russia, while 97% have an unfavourable opinion. For the US, those figures are reversed, with 91% positive and 3% negative. Meanwhile, 94% now see Russia as a major threat to Poland, up from 65% when the question was last asked in 2018.
Poles’ views of the US are the most favourable they have ever been and their views of Russia the least favourable.
In 2010, as many as 45% of Poles had a favourable view of Russia, but that figure fell significantly in 2014 (to 12%) amid Russia’s previous aggression against Ukraine. It then recovered to 33% in 2019, but has now plummeted following the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Pew’s new data show that Poles’ favourable views of NATO (89%) and the European Union (89%) are the highest they have ever been.
A large majority of Poles, 84%, believe that the EU “promotes democratic values” (up from 67% in 2018) while 44% say it is “intrusive” (down from 68% in 2018). Attitudes towards the bloc closely correlate with age, being most positive among the young and most negative among the elderly.
Pew’s data also show that views of the EU are much less favourable among supporters of the ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, which has regularly clashed with Brussels. Only 38% of PiS supporters think the EU treats Poland fairly and 47% that it respects Poland’s values.
Meanwhile, 82% of Poles say they have confidence in US President Joe Biden – also the highest figure among any country surveyed – and 11% have no confidence in him.
That is the highest figure ever recorded for a US president in Poland, beating the previous record of 64% for Barack Obama in 2015. Donald Trump recorded a high of 51% in 2019 (when Poland was the only European country where a majority had confidence in Trump).
In Pew’s new survey, only 42% of Poles said they have confidence in French President Emmanuel Macron (the lowest of any country apart from Israel), 41% in German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, 11% in China’s Xi Jinping, and 2% in Vladimir Putin (the lowest anywhere).
Pew’s findings – which were based on face-to-face interviews with 1,043 adults in Poland between 25 March and 5 May this year – mirror other recent polling.
This year’s Democracy Perception Index carried out by Latana for the Alliance of Democracies also found that Poland has the most negative views of Russia among the 53 countries surveyed, with 87% of Poles negative and 5% positive.
Polling published this month by IBRiS found that NATO and the EU are Poles’ first and third most trusted institutions, with confidence in both rising significantly in recent years.
Main image credit: Marcin Stepien / Agencja Wyborcza.pl
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
