Polls show slight decrease in number of people expecting full liberation of Ukrainian territory at end of war

The number of Ukrainians who consider the outcome of Ukraine fully restoring its territorial integrity to be realistic has slightly decreased since May 2022, but the vast majority of respondents still believe that the war will end with Ukraine returning to the 1991 borders.

Source: results of a poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) on 5-10 February

Quote: “Compared to May 2022, there are slightly fewer people who consider the scenario of the full restoration of territorial integrity to be realistic, but still, the vast majority of Ukrainians – 65% – believe that the war will end with Ukraine regaining control of all territories, including Donbas and Crimea (this number was 71% in May 2022).”

Infographics: KIIS

Details: In particular, 14% of respondents believe the fighting will shift to internationally-recognised Russian territory.

At the same time, the number of people who believe that Ukraine may have to concede some territory to end the war has risen from 25% in May 2022 to 32% in February 2024

19% of respondents believe that the war will end with Ukraine keeping the territories it currently controls. Sociologists explain that the figure in May 2022 was 6%, but since then, Ukraine has liberated significant areas of land, meaning that in 2024, respondents answered in a much different context than back in May 2022.

Another 9% believe that Ukraine will liberate all of the territories it controlled before 24 February 2022. The remaining 4% expect the liberation of all mainland territories including the Donbas, but not Crimea.

Infographics: KIIS

The study was conducted from 5 to 10 February. A total of 1202 respondents (aged 18 years and older) living in all oblasts of Ukraine (except the Autonomous Republic of Crimea) were interviewed using telephone interviews based on a random sample of mobile numbers. Residents of the temporarily occupied territories could not be included in the sample, and the survey was not issued to citizens abroad.

Formally, under normal circumstances, the statistical error of such a sample (with a probability of 0.95 and taking into account the design effect of 1.1) did not exceed 3.2% for indicators close to 50%, 2.7% for indicators close to 25%, 2.1% for indicators close to 10%, and 1.4% for indicators close to 5%.

In times of war, a certain systematic deviation is added in addition to the specified formal error. However, sociologists are convinced that the results obtained retain high representativeness and allow for a fairly reliable analysis of public sentiment.

Support UP or become our patron!