This video is fake, as is the data mentioned.
In the context of the presidential elections in Poland, pro-Russian resources are spreading a video that 68% of Poles would like to see Putin as president of their country. The video claims that they support the Russian president more than any local politicians. Poles supposedly admire Putin’s severity and determination, as well as his unwillingness to compromise the interests of their own country.
However, this video, as well as the information in it, are fake. The Polish media source did not publish such a story on its website: instead, they wrote about cyberattacks by Russian hackers who tried to interfere in the presidential elections in Poland. We also failed to find a single study that showed the majority of Polish citizens expressing support for Putin. On the contrary, according to the results of an international sociological study of the attitude towards the politics of Vladimir Putin, which was conducted in 2024 among more than 40 thousand people, it turned out that Poland is the country where Putin is least trusted. Thus, 92% of respondents in Poland do not trust Russian President Vladimir Putin at all and his ability to do the right thing on the international arena. According to the researchers, «the results of the survey highlight the gap between the West and the rest of the world, as trust in Putin is much higher in countries outside the West. Nevertheless, trust exceeded 50 percent in only three countries that were included in the survey».
Voting in the first round of the presidential election in Poland began on May 18. The most popular candidates are the liberal mayor of Warsaw, Rafal Trzaskowski, and the head of the Institute of National Remembrance, Karol Nawrocki, who is supported by the right-wing conservative Law and Justice party. In the first round, none of the candidates received enough votes to win, and two candidates made it to the second round – Rafal Trzaskowski, who received 31.36% of the vote, and Karol Nawrocki, who received 29.54% of the vote.
We recently refuted a similar claim about European citizens’ support for pro-Russian leaders in the article Fake: Fico, Orban and Vucic’s Approval Ratings Increased After Moscow Trip.
