“Compared to September 2023, the share of people who want a quick end to the conflict in Ukraine, even at the cost of the country losing chunks of its territory, has increased slightly by seven percentage points to 69%. This is probably a sign of fatigue towards the conflict, which leads to the feeling that it would be good to end this war as soon as possible,” STEM Research Director Jaromír Mazák explains. Interestingly, the proportion of people who would support Ukraine until it regains its lost territories is slightly higher among young people. “Among 18-29-year-olds, the proportion of those in favour of supporting Ukraine up until a victory is five percentage points higher compared to the whole population,” Mazák says.
Source: STEM, Trendy (“Trends” regular survey) 2023/06 + 09, 2024/01
Source: STEM, Trendy 2024/01
On the other hand, refugees from the war who have found a temporary home in the Czech Republic have continuing support among Czechs. According to STEM data, more than half of the public agrees that it is right that the Czech Republic continues to allow Ukrainian refugees to stay in the Czech Republic. Specifically, the agreement level reached 53% in January 2024. “The majority stays stable over time. When we asked the same question last June, 56% were in favour,” Mazák says, adding that the current data do not show differences between age groups.
Source: STEM, Trendy 2023/06 a 09 + 2024/01
Source: STEM, Trendy 2024/01
What does change slightly over time, however, are the attitudes towards Russia. “We ask people in the Czech Republic how they would rate their relationship to several chosen countries using Czech school grades, that is, on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 is the best and 5 is the worst. While Slovakia usually comes on top with an average grade between 1 and 2, Russia tends to be at the other end of the scale. The decline in popularity is noticeable between 2021 and 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. Then, the average grade deteriorated from 3.4 to 4,” Mazák says.
Source: STEM, Trendy 2021-2023
On the contrary, an interesting shift can be seen in the perception of Ukrainian and Russian residents of the Czech Republic as potential neighbours. Since the 1990s, STEM has been asking people to assess whether they would mind people from some specific demographic groups as neighbours. Slovaks are at the top of the acceptability list, and according to data from the end of last year, they would be easily tolerated as neighbours by 91% of the Czech population. “An interesting change can be traced in the case of Russians and Ukrainians. In the long term, the acceptability of Russians had been about ten percentage points higher than that of Ukrainians. After the invasion of Crimea in 2014, the acceptability of Ukrainians as potential neighbours increased and became equal to that of Russians. However, the biggest change in both directions occurred after the 2022 start of the war, as data from the end of 2023 showed that 36% of Czechs could easily imagine Russians as neighbours, while for Ukrainians, the figure stood at 45%,” Mazák explains.
“How would you tolerate having a person who’s [nationality] as a neighbour?”
The share of “Very well, with no issues” for respective countries
Source: STEM, Trendy 1994-2023
The mentioned data, together with earlier findings, have served STEM to take a deeper look at the attitudes of Czech society towards the conflict in Ukraine, towards Russia, and towards refugees from Ukraine. The index of Czech public attitudes towards the war in Ukraine has proved to be stable over time; and in addition to the above-discussed attitude of Czechs towards supporting Ukrainians in regaining lost territories, the index also takes into account opinions on whether Russia is unambiguously responsible of the conflict in Ukraine, as well as the preferred geopolitical heading of the Czech Republic. “In the case of responsibility for the conflict, we asked people whether they agree with the statement that Russia is the clear offender in the war in Ukraine. As for the geopolitical heading of the Czech Republic, we gave participants the choice of whether they wanted the Czech Republic to move more towards the East, the West, or to stay somewhere in between,” Mazák explains how the index is construed. While the attitudes are quite clear on the question of responsibility for the war, as 65% of the population stated in September 2023 that Russia is clearly the responsible one, the situation is more complicated when it comes to the geopolitical heading of the Czech Republic. !The number of people who would like the Czech Republic to head east is a bare minimum, around four per cent of the population. However, there are also not many who want to go to the West. The overwhelming majority of people want to stay somewhere in between,” Mazák adds.
Source: STEM, Trendy 2023/06 + 09
Source: STEM, Trendy 2023/06 + 09
Based on these data, STEM calculated the mentioned index of the Czech public’s attitudes towards the war in Ukraine. “From the distribution of the index in the population, it is clear that two-thirds of the Czech public agree that Russia is to blame for the conflict. But if we are talking about continuing to support Ukraine in regaining its lost territories even if it may mean prolonging the war, only one-third of the public is in favour,” Mazák explains. If we focus on the roughly one-third of the public that disagrees that Russia is the clear culprit in the war, then a larger portion can be described as doubting (20% in September 2023). A smaller portion (11+4%) are people who more or less accept Russia’s framing of the war. Only a tiny fraction of the public (4% in September 2023) are pro-Russian enough to want the Czech Republic to return to Russia’s sphere of influence.
Source: STEM, Trendy 2023/06 + 09
The cited research of STEM Research Institute (www.stem.cz) was carried out on a representative sample of the Czech population aged 18 and older on 18-27 January 2024. 1,057 respondents answered the questions in a combination of online and face-to-face interviews (CAWI+CAPI). The report also uses data from other surveys of the Trendy (“Trends”) regular survey, which are conducted using the same methodology on a sample of about 1,000 respondents.
