Western countries marked the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. A few days earlier, on May 2, 2025, while discussing the upcoming commemorative events with BelTA news agency reporter Yuriy Groerov, Deputy Nikolai Buzin said the most important thing was the people’s willingness to defend their country. He added that while Belarusians have it, Europeans do not.
“Recently I came across a study by Polish experts in which more than 70% of Poles, when asked ‘What will you do if war breaks out on our territory?’ said, ‘We’ll leave the country,’” Buzin said.
The Institute for Market and Social Research posed that question in a survey conducted for the newspaper Rzeczpospolita. It was conducted in mid-April 2025. The results differ from those cited by the Belarusian deputy: fewer than 20% of respondents said they would leave the country with their families if war broke out. In other words, nearly four times fewer than what Buzin claimed.
Compared to a previous poll on the same topic published in December 2023, the number has slightly increased: back then, about 12% of respondents said they would want to evacuate the country.
This year’s survey also showed that one in 10 respondents is willing to volunteer for the army. Nearly one in four said they would become a civilian volunteer. A similar study conducted among Polish youth in 2023–2024 found that in the event of war, one in four respondents might leave the country. At the same time, nearly half of young people said they would be willing to volunteer for the army.
The WTF team found no such survey conducted in our country. So we can’t compare Poles’ and Belarusians’ willingness to flee or fight the way Deputy Buzin did.
