Percentage of Ukrainians believing country remains single entity fighting Russian aggression declining – survey
Just over half of the Ukrainians surveyed (51.9%) agree that by countering Russian aggression, Ukraine has become a single entity, according to the results of a survey conducted by the Institute of Social and Political Psychology of the National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine together with the Association of Political Psychologists of Ukraine.
The results were presented at a press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine agency on Wednesday.
As noted, in 2024, the share of such people reached almost 56%, and in 2023 it exceeded 63%. The share of those who disagree with this statement increased from 13.2% in 2023 to 23.1% in 2025.
The share of citizens who agree with the statement "Those who fled the war abroad, let them stay there, they do not deserve to live in Ukraine" has doubled - from 14.5% in 2023 to almost 31% in 2025.
Relations between displaced persons and host communities within the country remain an area of potential tension and contradictions. On the one hand, respondents now disagree more (37.9%) than agree (32.1%) that relations between displaced persons and the local population are not easy and leave much to be desired (in 2023, the situation was the opposite - 27.7% versus 39.1%, respectively).
On the other hand, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the number of respondents who believe that their lives are significantly influenced by migrants from other regions of Ukraine has doubled (from 14.4% to 29.8%). Among respondents who are migrants, 43.4% are sure that the population of the host region significantly influences the situation in which they live. The level of dissatisfaction with such influence in all of these groups of respondents is 100%.
In addition, during the full-scale invasion, the proportion of respondents who believe that Ukraine is a European state and should go to Europe has significantly decreased. If in 2023, three quarters of respondents (76.3%) agreed with this and only 6.5% disagreed, now less than 60% share Euro-optimistic views, and every sixth does not share them. The least pro-European attitudes are shown by residents of the southern regions of Ukraine, where the share of those who support the European integration imperative (32.4%) is less than the share of those who do not support it (40.3%), and is comparable to the share of those who are undecided (27.3%). Three quarters of respondents in the eastern regions (74.3%) are confident that Ukraine is a European state and should go to Europe, while in the West there are less than half of them (48.2%).
"The reasons for this paradox are difficult to interpret unambiguously. One explanation may be that the socio-demographic structure of the population of these regions has significantly transformed due to displacement and refugees, as well as due to the intensity of mobilization measures," the press release notes.
The survey was conducted by the Institute of Social and Political Psychology of the National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine together with the Association of Political Psychologists of Ukraine using face-to-face interviews on March 15-25, 2025. A total of 1,213 respondents aged 18 and over were interviewed in government-controlled territory. The sample is representative of the adult population of Ukraine. The margin of error is 3.2%.
