Poll: 76% of French people are worried about the Russian nuclear threat

Vladimir Putin brandished the nuclear threat on Sunday as part of the war he is waging against Ukraine. While the tension has not subsided and the fighting intensifies this Wednesday in Kiev, 76% of French people say they are worried about this Russian nuclear threat, according to an exclusive survey by the CSA institute for CNEWS.

In detail, this survey reveals that 30% of French people are “very worried”, 46% say they are “fairly worried”, 20% are “not really worried” and only 4% of those questioned say they have no concerns.

Proportions that vary according to the partisan proximities of the respondents. While 78% of voters on the left, and even 82% of people close to the Socialist Party, are worried, the proportion drops to 64% for voters on the far right of the political spectrum.

The voters of the Reconquête party of Éric Zemmour are even 38% to affirm not to be worried about the Russian threat, and are those who fear the least a nuclear offensive of Russia of all the political spectrum. The Republicans are 76% to fear an attack from Moscow, same score for the respondents of La République en Marche.

an unparalleled attack capacity

On Sunday, February 27, Vladimir Putin had ordered his generals to put “the deterrent forces of the Russian army on special combat alert”. A formulation that does not speak explicitly of the Russian nuclear arsenal, but which leaves little doubt about Moscow’s desire to make Ukraine and the Western countries that support it tremble by reminding them of Russia’s superiority in nuclear matters.

Its arsenal is indeed the largest in the world, since Russia has 5,977 warheads against 5,428 for the United States, 350 for China, 290 for France.

Despite Vladimir Putin’s threats, the United States has questioned the likelihood of a Russian nuclear attack in Ukraine or elsewhere, and Joe Biden has made it clear that he is not worried. American diplomacy, however, denounced this “unnecessary and dangerous provocative rhetoric”. For Germany, the stirrings of the nuclear threat were caused by the reverse of the Russian army, which did not expect such resistance from the Ukrainian army.

* Survey carried out on 1^er and March 2 on a representative national sample of 1,010 people over the age of 18 by self-administered online questionnaire.