The International Republican Institute (IRI) just released the results of a massive 22 city 17,000 respondent poll it commissioned earlier this spring on Ukrainians’ attitudes towards politics, corruption, the economy, NATO, the European Union, Russia, and almost anything else you can think of. The 22 cities in which polls were conducted represent all the regional capitals which are currently under the control of the central government, so essentially the capitals of every oblast in Ukraine outside of Lugansk, Donetsk, and Crimea. . . .
Well the headline figures are the following: 57% of respondents to the poll would choose to join the European Union (versus 13% who want to join the Russia-led customs union) while 47% would vote yes in a referendum about joining NATO (versus 29% who would vote no).
At the same time, as the following graphs show, there are still some pretty significant regional differences. On NATO membership the percentage of “nos” ranged from 51% in Odessa to 4% in Lviv. On the question of membership in the European Union, the range was, if anything, even greater: 30% of the residents of Odessa, Kharkiv, and Mykolaiv want to join the EU. Meanwhile in Ternopil 92% do.
Roman (was) in Ukraine
