Almost 40% of Ukrainians support Ukraine-Russia independence, want friendly relations between countries
Residents of Ukraine basically support the independence of Ukraine and Russia and stand for friendly relations between the two countries, as evidenced by the September poll of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS).
According to the data posted on Monday by the joint project of KIIS and the Russian non-governmental research organization Levada Center, 39.9% of Ukrainians support this position. At the same time, 48.4% of Ukrainian respondents believe that Ukraine's relations with Russia should be the same as with other countries.
Some 3.7% of surveyed Ukrainians believe that Ukraine and Russia should unite in one state.
With direct regard to the attitude of Ukrainians towards Russia and vice versa - Russians to Ukraine, the following data were received: in September, 37% of Ukrainians were well or very well disposed to Russia, while 46% were bad or very bad, 17% were undecided. In Russia, 32% of Russians regarded Ukrainians well or very well, 53% - bad or very bad, 15% were undecided.
Thus, the number of positively disposed Ukrainians towards Russians has decreased from 44% to 37% since May, and the number of Russians positively disposed to Ukraine has grown from 26% to 32%.
The poll titled "The attitude of the Ukrainian population to Russia" was conducted from September 16 to October 1, 2017 by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology. Some 2,040 respondents aged 18 and over living in 108 settlements in all regions of Ukraine (except Crimea) on a stochastic sample representative of the population of Ukraine were personally interviewed. The residents of Luhansk and Donetsk regions were interviewed only in the territories controlled by Ukraine.
The statistical sampling error (with probability of 0.95 and with design effect of 1.5) does not exceed: 3.3% for indicators close to 50%, 2.8% for indicators close to 25%, 2.0% for indicators close to 10%, 1.4% for indicators close to 5%.
Levada Analytical Center conducted a survey titled "The Attitude of the Russian population to Ukraine" on a representative sample of the Russian population. Some 1,602 people aged 18 and over were interviewed during the period of September 15 through September 19.
