Public sentiment in the third year of the full-scale Russian invasion is shifting towards more pessimistic assessments of the present and future of Ukraine.

This is evidenced by the data of a survey, conducted by the Institute of Social and Political Psychology of the National Academy of Educational Sciences of Ukraine together with the Association of Political Psychologists of Ukraine on March 1 through March 15, 2024 and presented at Interfax-Ukraine. In addition to the regional context, these studies were differentiated based on the political commitment of the respondents: supporters of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Valeriy Zaluzhny and Petro Poroshenko.

As reported in a press release following the results of the study, more than half of the respondents (56.1%) now assess the socio-economic and political situation in Ukraine as bad or very bad, and only a quarter (24.6%) as quite normal or normal . "However, this distribution of assessments differs little from the results of a survey conducted on the eve of the full-scale invasion in 2022, when 52.2% of respondents considered the situation in the country to be bad or very bad, and 31.8% considered normal or quite normal," sociologists said.

Sociologists recorded that southern Ukraine's residents more often than other regions assess the situation as bad or very bad (62.1%). Among Zelenskyy's supporters there were fewer negative assessments of the situation in the country (49%) than among supporters of Zaluzhny (59.1%) and Poroshenko (64.3%).

Only every fourth respondent (25%) expects that the situation in the country will change for the better; 42% believe that changes for the better will most likely or definitely not happen. A year ago, there were more optimists than pessimists among respondents (35% and 30%, respectively). The largest proportion of respondents with positive expectations was in the south of Ukraine (44.1%), the smallest in the center (18.4%).

Every third among respondents (33.8%) today agrees that the things in Ukraine are moving in the right direction. This is significantly less than a year ago (50.8%), but more than in 2022 (29.3%). Residents of the east (45.5%) and south (48.8%), as well as supporters of Zelenskyy (66.1%) are more inclined to believe that the things are moving in the right direction. To a lesser extent – residents of the central regions (23.4%) and Poroshenko supporters (17.3%).

The survey was conducted using face-to-face interviews. A total of 2,000 respondents aged 18 years and older were surveyed in Ukrainian-controlled territory. The sample represents the adult population of Ukraine. The sampling error is 3.2%.

The survey of regional differences in public opinion is performed based on the consolidation the regions into four macro-regions: Western (Volyn, Zakarpattia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Rivne, Ternopil, Chernivtsi regions); Central (Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Kirovohrad, Poltava, Sumy, Khmelnytsky, Cherkasy, Chernihiv regions, and the city of Kyiv); Eastern (Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Luhansk, Kharkiv regions); Southern (Mykolaiv, Odesa, Kherson regions). The data are also differentiated by the political allegiance of respondents based on the distribution of answers to the question "If presidential elections were to be held in Ukraine due to the end of the current president’s term and the below-mentioned individuals were running, who would you vote for?". The choice of alternatives "Volodymyr Zelensky", "Valeriy Zaluzhny", and "Petro Poroshenko" collectively covers 53% of the sample.

The February 2022 monitoring data, with which the current survey results are compared, was obtained on the eve of the full-scale invasion.