Anton Grushetskyi and Volodymyr Paniotto
December 30, 2024
Foreign Affairs
War transforms countries. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched in 2022, has not only killed tens of thousands, displaced millions, shattered cities and communities, and crippled the Ukrainian economy; it has also changed the way Ukrainians see the world around them. Since 2022, public opinion in Ukraine has shifted on several key issues, including on how Ukrainians perceive their national identity, how they imagine their orientation to the wider world, and how ready they are to resist foreign aggression.
The Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, the research organization where we work, has been conducting national public opinion surveys since Ukraine gained independence in 1991. Before the full-scale war, KIIS carried out around 100 to 150 studies annually on a variety of issues. Even after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the organization continued to conduct such surveys and gradually restored operations to almost prewar levels. The institute can operate only in areas under Ukrainian control; KIIS does not survey refugees abroad or those in occupied territories.
Since the beginning of the war, Ukrainians have come to value their state, sovereignty, and democratic rights more highly. Nearly three years of fighting have also flattened differences in attitudes between regions and encouraged greater uniformity across ethnic and linguistic lines. This increased cohesion and greater support for the state among Ukrainians helps bolster efforts to resist Russia. Unfortunately, wartime also produces new divisions—for instance, between military personnel and those who have not served, and between internally displaced people and those who remained in the occupied territories—that can cause friction and social tensions.
Ukrainians recognize the tough slog ahead. After last year’s unsuccessful counteroffensive, they expect the war to last longer than they did before and they are less optimistic about the future. The percentage of those who believe that Ukraine will be a prosperous country within the European Union in ten years dropped from 88 percent in October 2022 to 73 percent in December 2023—and even further, to 55 percent, in December 2024. But that decline can be understood as a pragmatic understanding of the difficulties of repelling an invading force. The war has still fostered greater patriotism among Ukrainians, stiffened their resolve to fight for their freedom, and deepened their desire to escape Russia’s orbit and become a secure and prosperous country within the EU.
Polling in 2022 after the start of the invasion reflects the familiar effects of wartime on public attitudes. Ukrainians became more forgiving of the failures of the state as the country focused on resisting Russia. After the war began, standards of living in Ukraine plummeted, the poverty rate increased, and unemployment rose sharply—and yet public approval of the state increased. Just
two months before the war, in November 2021, only five percent of people believed that the central government was handling its responsibilities well, while 44 percent believed that it was not. By December 2022, eight months into the war, the assessments had almost reversed: 41 percent approved of the government and only nine percent did not.
Among state institutions, the armed forces enjoy the highest level of trust. During the first year of the war, trust in the military rose from 72 percent to 96 percent. That boost was also evident in perceptions of the presidency. Before the war, in December 2021, only 27 percent of Ukrainians trusted President Volodymyr Zelensky. By December 2022, after ten months of fighting, that figure skyrocketed to 84 percent—a degree of trust in the president that is unprecedented in Ukrainian politics. Trust in the parliament during the same period also grew, from 11 percent to 35 percent. These findings confirm the rally-around-the-flag effect of the war: Ukrainians have largely united behind their leaders and state institutions as they fight for their country’s future.
This sense of national unity was noticeably weaker in the past. Ukraine lies between Russia and Europe, and this position has defined its geopolitical choices throughout its independence. In most parliamentary and presidential elections, attitudes toward Russia and the EU have been among the most significant issues. The presidency has alternated in the past between figures closer to Russia and those closer to Europe. President Viktor Yushchenko, who ruled from 2005 to 2010, wanted to push Ukraine westward into Europe, while his successor, President Viktor Yanukovych, who ruled from 2010 until his dramatic ouster, in 2014, pursued a pro-Russian policy.
Before 2014, public attitudes ran roughly in parallel to these fluctuations. Around 50 to 65 percent of Ukrainians favored an alliance with Russia, while 35 to 50 percent preferred joining the EU. Even so, Ukrainians across all regions, including Crimea, the Donbas, and other territories currently under Russian occupation, consistently envisioned their country as an independent state; they did not seek reintegration with Russia. Interestingly, a pro-European orientation did not equate to anti-Russian sentiments. Among those who supported EU membership, the vast majority had a positive attitude toward Russia and sought neighborly relations.
Until Russia’s recent aggression, Ukrainians were not especially interested in joining NATO. Between 2009 and 2013, only 16 to 19 percent of the population wanted Ukraine to accede to NATO. Most politicians did not even include this point in their election platforms, as it was unpopular. During the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, when Ukrainians toppled the Russian-aligned Yanukovych, protesters did not demand NATO membership.
Indeed, in statistics that make for strange reading now, Russian President Vladimir Putin was actually rather popular in Ukraine before 2014, with an approval rating of around 60 percent. Ukrainian politicians at the time would have been thrilled with such numbers; the most popular Ukrainian politicians before the 2010 presidential election had an approval rating of no more than 30 percent. In general, 80 to 90 percent of Ukrainians expressed a positive attitude toward Russia.
The situation changed drastically after Russia took Crimea in 2014. This act of aggression led to a significant increase in public support for Ukraine’s accession to NATO, reaching 48 percent in 2015. Some analysts have suggested that Russia attacked Ukraine to prevent it from joining NATO. But in reality, Ukraine’s desire to join NATO became stronger as a reaction to Russian aggression. To be sure, even after 2014, there was significant regional differentiation on support for NATO membership. Most Ukrainians wished to join the alliance, but many in eastern and southern Ukraine remained against it. In 2019, the Ukrainian parliament enshrined Ukraine’s geopolitical preference for the EU and NATO in the constitution, but a significant minority of Ukrainian citizens, mostly in the east and south, remained disinterested in further integration with the West. In 2021, 70 percent of residents in western regions and 58 percent in central regions, including the capital, Kyiv, wanted to join the EU. But in southern regions, less than half supported this idea, and in eastern regions, less than a third were in favor. These polls did not include Crimea and those areas of the Donbas that Russia seized in 2014.
Only after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 did the majority of Ukrainians—in all regions and regardless of whether they were Russian speakers or Ukrainian speakers—begin to support both EU and NATO membership. By July 2022, 81 percent of Ukrainians wanted to join the EU, and 71 percent wanted to join NATO. As for attitudes toward Russia and Russians, the percentage of those with a positive view dropped to two percent. This is partly because in the July 2022 surveys KIIS was unable to interview residents in the Russian-occupied territories, which includes eastern and southern regions where support for Russia has historically been higher. But of those Ukrainians who held positive views of Russia in 2021, 80 percent would hold negative views after the invasion in 2022. Such a dramatic turn suggests that the Ukrainian people have chosen emphatically and irreversibly to align with Europe and the West, not to leave their future tethered to Russia.
To be sure, the war has taken a severe toll on Ukrainians and they are well aware that victory is not certain. After the country’s expected counteroffensive in 2023 failed to realize major gains, the indicators somewhat worsened. For example, in May 2023, only ten percent of Ukrainians were willing to postpone the liberation of certain territories to the future; by the end of 2024, this figure had risen to 38 percent. Even as Ukrainians remained mostly optimistic about their country’s future, the proportion of pessimists had also grown to 28 percent from 19 percent in December 2023.
And yet Ukrainians remain resilient. The moral and psychological state of a population is a critical factor in the context of any military conflict, especially during war. It shapes the country’s readiness for self-defense, its will to win, and its ability to persevere under stress and extraordinary circumstances. The level of social cohesion in Ukraine was very high between 2022 and 2024. For example, among those communities hosting Ukraine’s many internally displaced people, 78 percent of respondents had a positive view of their displaced compatriots (and another 19 percent held neutral views). Amid the ravages of the war, most Ukrainians feel a strong sense of Ukrainian identity, of belonging to the country, and of trust in state institutions. Between 2022 and 2024, an average of 80 percent of respondents identified themselves primarily
as “citizens of Ukraine,” as opposed to residents of a locality, representatives of an ethnic group, or citizens of the world.
Levels of public involvement in mutual assistance and trust in civilian volunteers have also significantly increased. More than 90 percent of respondents claim to be involved in the defense of the country to some extent, mostly through financial contributions and volunteer work. Alongside the military, volunteers enjoy a great deal of public trust: as of December 2024, 81 percent of Ukrainians trust the civilian volunteers bolstering the war effort.
The war has also had the effect of flattening those regional and ethnic variations that have persisted. Many regions of Ukraine have long been culturally distinct. Before World War I, the western part of the country was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. During the interwar period, the western region came under Polish control. Most of the population in this part of the country speaks Ukrainian and is more oriented to the West. By contrast, the eastern and southern parts of Ukraine have a large Russian-speaking population.
Unsurprisingly, public polling before 2014 showed significant differences between the east and south, on the one hand, and the west and center, on the other, when it came to attitudes toward Russia, the EU, NATO, various political figures, state holidays, and historical figures. Those differences were also apparent across linguistic groups, with Ukrainian speakers preferring to deepen relations with the West and Russian speakers preferring to deepen relations with Russia.
But after the full-scale war began in 2022, regional and linguistic-ethnic differences radically decreased. For instance, if a referendum on EU membership had been held in 2021, 70 percent in the west would have voted for EU accession, compared with only 29 percent in the east. By mid-2022, 88 percent in the west would have voted for EU accession, and 71 percent would have done so in the east.
Other indicators followed a similar pattern. In October 2022, most Ukrainians—60 percent—already felt that they were part of the national resistance, with another 32 percent feeling at least partially involved in resisting the enemy. Only four percent of respondents did not feel like part of the resistance. Eighty-four percent of those surveyed reported using the Ukrainian language more, and 55 percent more frequently wore national symbols and colors. Support for the armed forces increased, with 81 percent indicating that they had donated money to the armed forces, and 21 percent joined the Ukrainian military.
Even as Ukrainians have navigated the ups and downs of the war, they have remained broadly optimistic about their future. Only 19 percent of Ukrainians believe that ten years from now their economy will be destroyed and many more of their compatriots will have fled. Most Ukrainians still believe that in ten years Ukraine will be a prosperous country within the EU. The war may have slightly diminished Ukrainian optimism about the future, but contrary to Moscow’s aims, the invasion has also made the country more united—and more resolved to move away from Russia and toward the West.