A survey carried out by Gorshenin Institute in partnership with Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Ukraine has found that if a referendum on Ukraine's accession to NATO were held today, 51.2% of Ukrainians would vote in favour.
The first vice president of Gorshenin Institute, Viktor Sokolov, shared these findings at a roundtable entitled "Will the adoption of NATO standards by the Ukrainian Armed Forces improve the country's defence capacity?".
“51.2% would vote for joining NATO and 30.1% against, 5.2% would not vote. And 13.5% found it difficult to answer the question," he said.
Gorshenin Institute conducts regular monitoring of Ukrainians' sentiments about NATO. Whereas in February 2008, 19.2% of respondents were ready to support NATO membership, in May 2013 the level of support reached 35.3%, and after the outbreak of the conflict with the Russian Federation in June 2014 it reached 47.3% (at the time the survey no longer covered Crimea and some areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions), in February 2015 it was 54.1% and further fluctuated around 50%.
An analysis of two-dimensional distributions by regions of Ukraine shows that the idea of joining NATO enjoys the greatest support in the west (72.1% for, 11.2% against) and the north (62.3% for, 23.7% against). The lowest support is in the east (28.1% for, 51.6% against) and the south (29.5% for, 41.5% against).
An analysis of two-dimensional distributions by age shows that traditionally the idea of joining NATO enjoys more solid support among young people aged 18-29 years (55.9% for, 25.8% against), and opposition from representatives of the 60+ generation (45% for, 35.1% against)," Sokolov said.
The survey "Reforms in Ukraine: changes for the better or imitation of progress" on 22 November-10 December 2019 interviewed 2,000 respondents aged 18 and above in all regions of Ukraine, except for Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The margin of error does not exceed +/-2.2%.