The vast majority of Ukrainians are proud of their citizenship and want to build their future lives in their homeland, Ukraine.
This was reported by the scientific director of the Ilko Kucheriv Foundation for Democratic Initiatives, Oleksiy Haran, at the press conference “Independence Day of Ukraine: The Value of the State, Unity and Volunteerism During the War”, held at Ukrinform, and presented a survey conducted jointly with the Razumkov Center.
“The absolute majority of Ukrainians (88%) are proud of their citizenship. For the third year in a row, pride in citizenship has been at almost the same high level (90.5% in 2022, 88.5% in 2023 and 88% in 2024), the highest indicator of all years of sociological observation. This applies to all age groups,” said Haran.
According to the expert, the survey also showed that the absolute majority of respondents want to build their future in Ukraine (86%), and the largest part of them shows a clear intention to stay in Ukraine (59%). This idea is prevalent among people of different levels of wealth and in all age groups. However, the willingness to stay in Ukraine increases with age. Among young people, 74% want to build their future in Ukraine, among 30-39 year olds – 81%, among 40-49 year olds – 87%, among 50-59 year olds – 90%, and in the oldest group – 93%.
Haran stressed that it was an “unexpectedly positive” result for him personally. “Our survey has shown that the claim that ‘everyone wants to move abroad’ is not true,” he added.
Haran added that the poll also included a traditional question about a referendum. “If a referendum on declaring Ukraine’s state independence were held today, the absolute majority of Ukrainians (85%) would support independence,” he said.
At the same time, according to the expert, positive assessments of the direction in which Ukraine is moving have decreased over the past year: currently, 40 percent of Ukrainians believe that developments are going in the right direction (in 2023, this figure was 49 percent), while 37 percent believe that the direction is wrong. Male respondents are slightly more likely to see the direction as correct than female ones, although uncertainty is more pronounced among the latter.
As for people’s general feelings about Ukraine’s future, Haran said hope clearly predominates (61%), followed by fear (40%) and optimism (33.5%).
The nationwide survey was conducted by the Ilko Kucheriv Foundation for Democratic Initiatives jointly with the Sociology Department of the Razumkov Center from August 8 to 15, 2024, and included 2,017 respondents.
Photo: ukraine-forum.eu
