The press release was prepared by Anton Hrushetskyi, the Deputy Director of KIIS

During July 6 to 20, 2022, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) conducted its own all-Ukrainian public opinion survey "Omnibus". By the method of computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI) based on a random sample of mobile phone numbers (with random generation of phone numbers and subsequent statistical weighting), 2,000 respondents living in all regions of Ukraine (except AR of Crimea) were interviewed. The survey was conducted with adult (aged 18 and older) citizens of Ukraine who, at the time of the survey, lived on the territory of Ukraine (within the boundaries controlled by the authorities of Ukraine until February 24, 2022). The sample did not include residents of territories that were not temporarily controlled by the authorities of Ukraine until February 24, 2022 (AR of Crimea, the city of Sevastopol, certain districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts), and the survey was not conducted with citizens who left the country after February 24, 2022.

Formally, under normal circumstances, the statistical error of such a sample (with a probability of 0.95 and taking into account the design effect of 1.1) did not exceed 2.4% for indicators close to 50%, 2.1% for indicators close to 25%, 1.5% - for indicators close to 10%, 1.1% - for indicators close to 5%.

Under conditions of war, in addition to the specified formal error, a certain systematic deviation is added. In particular, if back in May, among all the respondents we interviewed, 2.5-4% lived in the territories occupied after February 24 (and this corresponded to the percentage of those who live there, because the generation of phone numbers was random), now due to the occupiers turning off telephone communication we managed to interview fewer respondents living in occupied settlements, in particular, their number is 0.2%. It is important to note that although the views of the respondents who lived in the occupation were somewhat different, the general tendencies were quite similar. That is, the impossibility to interview such respondents now does not significantly affect the quality of the results. There are other factors that can affect the quality of results in "wartime" conditions (see Annex 2).

In general, we believe that the obtained results are still highly representative and allow a fairly reliable analysis of public moods of the population.

In the event of a referendum on joining the EU, 81% of all respondents would vote "for" joining. "Against" joining the EU - 4%. Others (15%) would not participate in voting or do not know how to vote. Support is somewhat lower in the case of joining NATO, but also the vast majority of Ukrainians would vote "for" - 71% of all respondents, while 7% would vote "against". 22% of the population would not participate in voting or do not know how to vote.

In calculation to the respondents who would participate in the expression of will, in the referendum on joining the EU, there would be 96% of votes "for", in the referendum on joining NATO - 91% of votes "for".

Graph 1. Imagine, please, that a referendum is currently taking place on the question of whether Ukraine to join ... . You can vote for joining, against joining, or abstain - do not participate in the voting. What is your choice?

Although there is a tendency to decrease support for joining the EU and NATO from West to East, at the same time, in all regions, the majority of the population would vote "for" joining both the EU and NATO. Even among residents of the South and East[1], respectively, 77% and 71% among all respondents would support Ukraine joining the EU. Also, 65% and 56% would support joining NATO.

Graph2. Voting in the referendum on joining the EU and NATO in the regional dimension

Graph 3 shows the results by linguistic and ethnic categories of the population of Ukraine. As can be seen, the majority among all categories support Ukraine's joining the EU and NATO (although there is a tendency for slightly lower support among Russian-speaking citizens). Even among Russian-speaking Russians, support for joining the EU and NATO prevails significantly: 53% support joining the EU, 16% do not support it; in the case of NATO, 51% support joining NATO, do not support – 27%.

Graph3. Voting in the referendum on joining the EU and NATO among linguistic and ethnic categories of the population

Compared to June 2021, the share of those who support joining the EU increased from 52% to 81%. Also, during this period, the share of those who support joining NATO increased from 48% to 71%. In addition, in the case of the EU, from 19% to 4%, and in the case of NATO, from 24% to 7%, the share of those who oppose Ukraine's membership in these organizations decreased.

If to compare the current moods with those before the Revolution of Dignity of 2013-2014, we can see an increase in support for joining the EU from 47% to 81% (and a decrease from 27% to 4% of those who are against joining). In the case of NATO, in the period before 2013, only 15-20% supported joining this organization (with the majority of the population opposed), while now 71% support and only 7% oppose.

Graph4. Imagine, please, that a referendum is currently taking place on the question of whether Ukraine to join ... . You can vote for joining, against joining, or abstain - do not participate in the voting. What is your choice?[2]

* Although data for only 2009 are available among the open data of KIIS, but until 2013 the situation did not change significantly, and in 2013 (before the Revolution of Dignity) the same 15-20% of Ukrainians supported joining NATO.

In addition to the all-Ukrainian level, it is important to pay attention to the evolution of public opinion of residents of individual regions. Graph 5 shows the relevant data on EU joining, graph 6 – on NATO joining.

In the case of joining the EU in the period before 2013, in fact, only residents of the West mostly supported the joining. In the Center, although support for joining the EU prevailed, it was not the majority of the population. In the South and East, those opposed to Ukraine's membership in the EU predominated (only a quarter would vote "for" joining the EU in a referendum).

By 2021, a certain majority of the West and the Center supported joining the EU. In the South, supporters of joining already prevailed, although there were less than half of them. Opponents of joining still prevailed in the East. As of July 2022, the vast majority of residents of the West, Center, South, and East support Ukraine's joining to the EU.

Graph5. Voting in the referendum on joining the EU in the regional dimension

A similar trend of changes can be observed with regard to the attitude towards joining NATO, with the difference that by 2013, significantly fewer Ukrainians wanted to join this organization than the EU. Currently, the majority of residents of the West, the Center, the South, and the East support joining NATO.

Graph6. Voting in the referendum on joining NATO in the regional dimension

A. Hrushetskyi, comments on the survey results:

As can be seen, in less than a 10-year period, Ukraine has gone from significantly different regional views on the external vector of development to consolidation and unity regarding the Euro-Atlantic movement of our country.

In fact, until 2013, there was a gradual evolution of views and growing commitment to European integration. In our polls in the 1990s, the majority was against Ukraine's membership in the EU, while already in 2013 there were more people who would vote "for" Ukraine joining this union (although clear interregional differences remained).

The occupation of Crimea by Russia, the outbreak of the war in Donbas, and finally the full-scale invasion of 2022 significantly accelerated the dynamics of views and led the vast majority of Ukrainians in all regions (and all linguistic and ethnic categories) to the understanding that Ukraine should be a member of both the EU and NATO.

Annex 1. Formulation of questions from the questionnaire

Imagine, please, that a referendum is currently taking place on the question of whether Ukraine should join the European Union. You can vote for joining this union, against joining, or abstain - do not participate in the voting. What is your choice?

(% among all respondents)

And if the referendum was held on the question of whether Ukraine should join NATO. Whatever your choice would be - vote for joining this union, against joining or abstain - do not participate in the voting?

(% among all respondents)

Annex 2. Methodological comments on the representativeness of telephone surveys conducted during the war

Even before the full-scale Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, there were a number of factors that negatively affected the representativeness of the polls (for example, the absence of a census for more than 20 years). A full-scale war, of course, greatly affects representativeness and complicates the work of sociologists, but does not make it impossible. Access to reliable data on the state of public moods remains relevant both for Ukrainians themselves and for our foreign partners (who, as the events of the past 5 months have shown, often underestimated and did not understand Ukraine and Ukrainians).

At the same time, in order to maintain objectivity, it is necessary to understand what limitations the war imposes on the conduct of sociological surveys. First of all, we pay attention to large-scale population movements. At the beginning of July, EU representatives estimated that 3.2-3.7 million Ukrainians - adults and children - are currently in these countries. There is no exact data on how many of them are adult citizens, but, most likely, it is about half. In addition, some Ukrainians left for other countries, except for the EU. In particular, a significant number of Ukrainians were forcibly deported to Russia and Belarus (according to some estimates, about 1 million). Among the approximately 30 million adult citizens (estimated at the time of the full-scale invasion), it can be roughly estimated that about 10% have left the country, and the method of telephone interviews cannot provide a reliable survey of these citizens. Even more citizens have become internally displaced persons, but they have a much smaller impact on the quality of telephone surveys, since almost all of these citizens have mobile phones and are reachable to participate in the survey (in fact, 14% of the respondents of this survey are IDPs).

Another important issue is the accessibility for the survey of the population of the territories that were occupied after February 24, 2022, due to the conduct of intensive military operations or due to interruptions in telephone communication. Now there is practically no connection. In May, 2.5-4% of respondents lived in these territories, now in the sample of residents of these territories - 0.2%. But it should be taken into account that a significant part of the population continues to leave these territories, therefore, most likely, no more than 1.5-2.5% of the total adult population of Ukraine are inaccessible due to communication problems.

In our opinion, a more significant impact on representativeness can have either a generally lower willingness of citizens with "pro-Russian" moods to participate in surveys, or the insincerity of those who did take part in the survey (given the obvious facts and prevailing opinions in the media regarding the Russian invasion , some citizens will not want to say what they really think "in public"). If to talk about the general willingness of respondents to participate in the survey, then in recent surveys we see either the same indicators or slightly lower (although it should be borne in mind that the lower willingness to participate of "pro-Russian"-minded citizens can be compensated by the higher willingness to participate of "pro-Ukrainian"-minded citizens).

We conducted a small methodological experiment in May, which shows that the citizens who are currently participating in the polls in terms of demographic characteristics and meaningful moods are close to those who participated in the polls until February 24, 2022. Preliminarily, we see some shift in the direction of "pro-Ukrainian"-minded citizens, which is reflected in up to 4-6% deviations for individual questions (in the direction of more frequent selection of answers that correspond to the "pro-Ukrainian" interpretation of events). In our opinion, this is a rather optimistic indicator in the current conditions. However, this experiment does not give an answer as to how sincere the respondents are now in their answers.

Taking into account our own observations and the experience of conducting surveys over many years, we still remain optimistic that, for the most part, respondents answer the questions sincerely. For example, the "imagined acquaintance" experiment shows little difference with the direct question. In addition, we assume that the demographic categories of citizens who have gone abroad and are unreachable for a telephone survey, at least now, do not differ very significantly in terms of a number of meaningful moods from similar demographic categories of citizens who have remained in Ukraine.

As a result, in our opinion, we should talk about a certain decrease in representativeness and an increase in error (in addition to the previously mentioned formal error, a certain systematic deviation is added due to the factors considered above), but at the same time, the obtained results still retain high representativeness and allow for a fairly reliable analysis of public moods of the population.

[1] The region is determined by where the respondent lived before February 24, i.e. IDPs who, for example, lived in the Donetsk oblast before February 24, but now live in another oblast, are considered residents of the East for the analysis.

[2] Data for 2013 (for the EU) and for 2009 (for NATO) are based on the results of a face-to-face survey. For a correct comparison with the current results, Crimea is excluded from the analysis, and the structure of the sample by macroregions corresponds to the current ratio.

[3] The composition of the macroregions is as follows: Western macroregion – Volyn, Rivne, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, Zakarpattia, Khmelnytskyi, Chernivtsi oblastss; Central macroregion - Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Chernihiv, Poltava, Kirovohrad, Cherkasy, Kyiv oblasts, Kyiv city, Southern macroregion - Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Odesa oblasts, Eastern macroregion - Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv oblasts.