More than 90% of Ukrainians believe in victory in the war with Russia, and for 55% of Ukrainians a victory means the restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty over the entire territory of Ukraine, including Crimea.
These are the findings of a new poll entitled “Independence Day of Ukraine: What unites Ukrainians and how we see victory in the sixth month of the war,” which were represented at Ukrinform by Andriy Sukharyna, an analyst at the Democratic Initiatives Foundation.
“The absolute majority of Ukrainians, more than 90% of respondents, believe in victory in the war, 77% – believe, 15% – rather believe. Only 4% do not believe in a Ukrainian victory,” the analyst said.
The poll also included questions about the duration of the war: until the end of the year, for 1-2 years, for 3-5 years.
According to Sukharyna, among those who believe in the victory of Ukraine, 31% believe that it will happen by the end of this year, 34% say that it will happen within 1-2 years, and 7% say that it will happen in 3- 5 years, and 23% of respondents failed to answer.
According to him, when asked “What can be considered a victory”, a little more than a fifth of the respondents talk about a victory in the war as something that includes certain territorial losses. 3% of the respondents say that a victory means the end of the war, in fact, the status quo that exists now, when most of Kherson, Luhansk, Donetsk and part of Kharkiv regions are occupied. 7.5% of the respondents say that a victory in the war is the situation as of February 23, that is, occupied Donbas, occupied Crimea, but the rest of the territory of Ukraine is free. 9% of the respondents consider the restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty on the entire territory of Ukraine, excluding Crimea, to be a victory.
“But the majority still speaks about the full-scale restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty over the entire Ukrainian territory, that is, 55% speak about the restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty over the entire territory of Ukraine as envisaged in the Constitution and what had existed before 2014. A little more than 20% go even further and say that they would consider the destruction of the Russian army and the overthrow of government in Russia or the dissolution of Russia as a state to be a victory in the war. This is if we talk about the war and what people expect,” Sukharyna said.
The poll was conducted by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation together with the Razumkov Centre Sociological Service, with the grant support of the University of Bremen and the International Renaissance Foundation, on August 5-12, 2022 in 112 populated areas (57 urban-type and 55 rural-type settlements) in Vinnytsia, Volyn, Dnipropetrovsk, Zhytomyr, Zakarpattia, Zaporizhzhia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kyiv, Kirovohrad, Lviv, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Poltava, Rivne, Sumy, Ternopil, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi, Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Chernivtsi regions and the city of Kyiv (in Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv regions – only in the territories controlled by the Ukrainian government and where hostilities are not taking place). A total of 2,024 respondents aged 18 and older were interviewed. The theoretical sampling error does not exceed 2.3%.