Despite electing two consecutive pro-NATO presidents, the Ukrainian people are apparently not on the same page as their elites. Only 41% want the nation to join the US-led military bloc with 37% preferring to remain unaligned.
That’s according to a survey by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology, which also discovered that 13% would prefer to sign up to the Russian-dominated CTSO alliance. Meanhile, 56.6% of Ukrainians believe that their country will eventually improve its relations with Russia, with 30.1% thinking that tensions between Kiev and Moscow will persist in the longer term.
Conducted in October, the research asked Ukrainians in the west, center, south, and east of the country about their opinions on topics dividing Ukrainian society. The pollsters also spoke to residents in government-controlled Donbass but didn’t contact people in the breakaway People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.