Poll Shows Majority of Hungarians Think the Risk of Nuclear War Is Real

The majority of Hungarians believe that the Russian-Ukrainian war could turn into a world war, and most of them also believe that one of the parties could in the future use nuclear weapons if the war continues, according to a public opinion poll conducted by the Nézőpont Institute.

The poll found that more than a year ago, when the Russian-Ukrainian war broke out, many people thought the war would end soon. Since then, however, there have been almost only steps to escalate the war. Russia has ordered a partial mobilization, and the European Union is now not only imposing economic sanctions, but is also supplying more and more deadly weapons to the war zone. “It is now clear that the war cannot be won by either side. An important question is therefore how Hungarians judge the consequences of continuing the war in the battlefield in this situation,” the organization said.

According to the survey, which interviewed 1,000 people by telephone between 17-19 April,

the majority of Hungarian voters (54%) feel that there is a real danger that the regional conflict in their neighborhood in Ukraine will become a global one. By contrast, 42 percent of voters are in the optimist camp.

Three-quarters of those who support the government (72%) feel that the continuation of the Russian-Ukrainian war risks starting another world war, while a quarter (25%) are optimistic and do not see this as a real danger. More than a third of opposition voters (39%) also see the risk of a world war as real, but a majority of them (59%) do not see the possibility of such an escalation.

With Russia and several Western arms suppliers considered nuclear powers, and with depleted uranium weapons already appearing in the war zone, the question of nuclear weapons deployability is also an important issue.

The majority of Hungarians (55%) believe that there is a risk of nuclear weapons being used in the continuation of the Russian-Ukrainian war, while 41% do not consider the risk to be real.

According to the public opinion poll, a much higher proportion of those who see a real danger of the Russian-Ukrainian war escalating into a world war (81%) fear the use of nuclear weapons, while only 16% fear a world war without nuclear weapons. Among those who do not fear a global conflict (77%), most do not fear the destruction of nuclear weapons, while 21% consider the use of nuclear weapons in a local conflict without the risk of a world war to be a possibility.

Almost three-quarters (70%) of voters who agree with the work of the Hungarian government consider the use of nuclear weapons to be a real threat, while a quarter (28%) are confident that it is not. But opposition voters are even more divided on this issue, with 41% also fearing the use of nuclear weapons and 55% believing that the conflict in Ukraine will not turn into a nuclear war, the survey said.

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