The main threat to European countries, as before, is Russia — it was named as the key threat by the majority of respondents who participated in the Pew Research Center poll. In Poland, 81% of respondents consider Russia a key threat (versus 6% who named Ukraine as a possible threat), and in Hungary, 33% placed Russia in first place (versus 27% who named Ukraine as a threat).
A number of propaganda media outlets write that in Hungary and Poland, Ukraine has begun to be considered a threat, as allegedly evidenced by the results of a recent poll by the American organization Pew Research Center.
In reality, propagandists deliberately distorted the results of a sociological survey by the Pew Research Center. Sociologists conducted a survey among residents of 25 countries of the world as part of the Spring 2025 Global Attitudes Survey. Among other things, respondents were asked which countries they considered to be the key threat to their country, while the possible answers were not limited to a specific list and they could name any country that came to mind.
Thus, according to the results of this survey, Russia is the most frequently mentioned threat in eight out of ten European countries that participated in the survey. In France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom, about half of the adult population or more consider Russia to be the biggest threat to their country.
Poland and Hungary, which Russian propaganda writes about, also named Russia as the main threat to their country. Ukraine became the second most common option, but among Poles it was named by only 6% of respondents (at the same time, 81% of Poles named Russia as a threat), and among Hungarians — 27%, while 33% of respondents named Russia as the main threat.
Pew Research Center notes that the share of respondents who call Russia a threat to Europe is significantly higher today than in 2007, when we asked a similar question in some of these countries.
Earlier, StopFake refuted a similar fake, created on the basis of a Pew Research Center study, in the article Manipulation: The Whole World Stopped Supporting Zelensky — Pew Research Center.
