Hostility towards local Russian-speakers has increased in Lithuania, a survey suggests. At the same time, the country is more welcoming to Ukrainians and refugees.
According to Giedrė Blažytė, research supervisor at the Diversity Development Group, an NGO that presented the survey, this year’s results show that Lithuania’s society was very open to accept refugees from Ukraine, which is reflected in the public opinion poll results.
“We know the situation we are living in now and what news we have been hearing since the end of February,” she said.
Nearly 80 percent of polled said they supported Lithuania’s policy to welcome Ukrainians fleeing from war. The survey also shows an overall decrease in negative public attitudes towards refugees.
In the survey, 27.3% of respondents said that they would not want to live next door to refugees (in 2021 the share was 47.1%), 13.9% said that they would not want to work in the same job (compared to 27.7% in 2021).
A third of the respondents said they would not want to let a flat to refugees (in 2021 48,3%).
Like last year, the majority of respondents said they did not want to live next door to Roma people (58.6%), former convicts (57.7%), and would not want to rent their homes to people who have been released from prison (63%) and the Roma (59%).
Dislike of Russians on the rise
The results of the survey show that the number of people who do not want to live next door to Russians has increased from 6.2% in 2021 to 16% in 2022.
According to the data of 2022, 23.1% of respondents would not want to rent their homes to Russians (9.9% in 2021), 13.6% would not want to work in the same workplace with Russians (4.5% in 2021).
When asked how opinions about some groups in society have changed over the past five years, 74.6% of respondents indicated that attitudes towards the local Russian population have worsened. In 2021, 26.7% thought so.
“It is not surprising that attitudes towards Russians in Lithuania are also becoming negative. Because again, more often than not, we hear about Russians from a negative perspective,” Blažytė said.
At the same time, about 64.4% of Lithuanian respondents said that their attitude towards Ukrainians living in Lithuania had significantly or somewhat improved over the past five years. In 2021, the figure was 48.7%.
The survey was carried out on September 16-27 and included 1,024 respondents over the age of 18.
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