The attitude of the population of Ukraine toward Russia did not change much, while the attitude of the population of Russia toward Ukraine became worse over the past 6 months. The amount of those Ukrainians who have positive attitude toward Russia decreased by 5 percentage points over the past 2 months what is statistically insignificant (from 42% in May to 40% in September), at the same time in Russia positive attitude over this period decreased by 13 percentage points (from 39% in May to 26% in September). The amount of those Ukrainians who prefer borders with Russia to be closed increased comparing to May 2016 (from 44% to 48%). The amount of those who support this idea in Russia also increased (from 36% to 39%).

According to a poll conducted by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology in September 2016, about half of the population of Ukraine was ready to vote for Ukraine's accession to the EU: if a referendum on whether to join Ukraine the European Union had been held at the time when the survey took place, 49% of residents of Ukraine would have voted for Ukraine's accession to the EU, 25% - against, and the remaining 25% - were undecided or would not have participated in the vote.

• If the parliamentary elections had been held in the end of September, the representatives of seven political forces would have entered the Parliament on party lists.
• All-Ukrainian Union “Batkivshchyna”, “Block Petra Poroshenka” and “Opozytsiynyi block” would have received more support than other political parties.

•    The level of support of AUU “Batkivshchyna” has slightly decreased over the past six month, while the support of “Block Petra Poroshenka”, on the contrary, has increased.
•    Over this time the support of “Opozytsiynyi block”, “Obiednania Samopomich”, Radical party of O.Liashko, and of the party “Hromadianska pozytsia” remained more or less the same.

These joint study by KIIS and the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation

If a referendum for the independence of Ukraine was held today, 87% of Ukrainians would vote in favor of the act of independence, which is close to the figure during the referendum held in 1991 (89%).  The most notable changes in the perception of citizens were observed in the southern and eastern regions of the country. Read more about the changes in public opinion over 25 years of independence in this press release.

According to the results, the vast majority of respondents (72%) concerned about the war in the East of Ukraine. Also amongst the worrisome issues are standard of living (61%), the economic situation (46%), and security of Ukraine (15%).

Amongst the all listed issues, the least worrisome one is the status of Russian language in Ukraine (1%), this situation is observed in all regions of Ukraine.