Survey: Only 27.5 percent of People Willing to Fight for Slovakia in Case of War

Bratislava, April 16 (TASR) - Concerns are growing slightly in Slovakia about the economic consequences of the war in Ukraine, especially about price hikes and the economic crisis, according to a 'How Are You, Slovakia?' survey carried out by the Slovak Academy of Science's (SAV) Institute of Sociology, MNFORCE agency and Seesame communications agency on a sample of 1,000 respondents between March 31 and April 7. The survey also showed that only 27.5 percent of all respondents would be willing to fight for Slovakia in the event of war. As in the previous month, the respondents in the current survey feel the greatest concern about rising energy prices and inflation (88.7 percent, the figure stood at 85.7 percent at the turn of March and April). Concerns about an economic crisis caused by the war also increased slightly (from 77.5 percent to 83.6 percent). Concerns about the war in Ukraine itself have eased very slightly (from 78.2 percent to 74 percent). Concerns about the outbreak of World War III (73.6 percent) and the war spreading to Slovakia (70.3 percent) increased very slightly. A large proportion of the respondents are also concerned about the condition of the Slovak health-care system (81.2 percent) and the popularity of extremist and anti-system groups in Slovakia (65.8 percent). If there were a war in Slovakia, only 27.5 percent of the respondents would be willing to fight for their country. A total of 37.1 percent of the respondents answered 'no', and 35.4 percent were don't knows. Men (33.5 percent) were somewhat more willing to fight than women (21.7 percent), but men were also more likely to answer this question negatively. "The very low willingness to fight for Slovakia may be related not only to low confidence in some institutions and the state but also to a certain geo-political split. History is also an important context - Slovakia doesn't have any tradition of seeing our armed forces as heroic, and in the past the country didn't win any major successful armed conflicts or uprisings," said sociologist Robert Klobucky of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAS). am/df