Russia is Slovakia’s biggest threat, say Slovak citizens

Russia is the country that could pose the biggest threat to Slovakia, according to a recent representative survey undertaken by the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAV) and released on Tuesday. Twenty-four percent of the people asked pinpointed Russia as the source of the biggest possible danger for Slovakia. This was down from the 34 percent indicated in a similar survey in 1996, however. In the latest survey, Ukraine came next on 22 percent, up from only 2 percent in 1996. "This stems from fear of the military conflict that is under way there", said Miloslav Bahna of SAV's Sociological Institute. That said, the outcome of the survey can't be construed as support for either side in the conflict. Meanwhile, Hungary is perceived as much less of a threat than it was in 1996, with its figure falling from 40 percent to 5 percent. According to the Academy, this indicates a profound and lasting decline in the perceptions of the threats and political upheavals that accompanied the setting up of Slovakia and the direction it took in the 1990s. The Academy also sought people's views on which country is culturally the closest to Slovakia. As in 1996, the Czech Republic came clearly on top with 75 percent, up from 62 percent in 1996. Ethnic Hungarians living in Slovakia tended to cite Hungary as a close country in cultural terms, but the Czech Republic was clearly the top choice even among these respondents. Practicing Catholics, meanwhile, had a higher tendency to refer to Poland than in the overall figures. The results were extrapolated from an ISSP Slovensko 2014 survey that the polling agency FOCUS carried out on a sample of 1,156 respondents between 17 September and 28 October of last year and from the 1995 ISSP National Identity survey that was carried out between 16 June and 26 June of 1996 and featured 1,388 respondents.