Business news from Ukraine

In August 2026, Ukrainians’ attitudes toward Uzbekistan remain predominantly neutral: 55.6% of respondents hold this view. Taking these categories together, 25.7% of those surveyed view the country positively, while 14.5% view it negatively, according to the Experts Club Information and Analytical Center. In the summary report, the positive figure is listed as 25.6%, which is due to the rounding of the raw data.

6.5% of Ukrainians have a completely positive attitude toward Uzbekistan, while 19.2% have a mostly positive attitude. 55.6% of respondents chose a neutral response. 13.1% view the country mostly negatively, 1.4% completely negatively, and another 4.3% were undecided.

When the categories are combined, the balance between positive and negative attitudes is +11.2 percentage points. Positive assessments thus outnumber negative ones by approximately 1.8 times. At the same time, more than half of those surveyed do not express a strong positive or negative stance toward the country.

In the overall regional picture, Uzbekistan has a less pronounced positive image than Georgia and Azerbaijan. In August, positive assessments stood at 57.3% for Georgia and 48.7% for Azerbaijan, while a high proportion of neutral responses remains the key feature of perceptions toward Uzbekistan.

At the same time, compared to the April 2025 survey, attitudes have become more defined. At that time, 63.4% of Ukrainians held a neutral stance toward Uzbekistan, 21.7% had a positive view, 9.3% had a negative view, and 5.6% were undecided. Thus, the positive segment grew by approximately 4 percentage points, the negative segment by 5.2 percentage points, and the share of neutral responses decreased by 7.8 percentage points.

Maksym Urakin, founder of the Experts Club Information and Analytical Center and a candidate of economic sciences, believes that a key factor in how Uzbekistan is perceived remains Ukrainians’ lack of awareness about the country’s current role in Central Asia.

“For a significant portion of Ukrainian society, Uzbekistan remains a rather distant country. People are exposed to far less information about its economy, business, politics, or humanitarian ties than they are about EU countries, the Caucasus, or Ukraine’s immediate neighbors. That is precisely why the neutral group still accounts for more than half of the respondents,” Urakin noted.

At the same time, he said, the decline in the share of neutral responses—from 63.4% in April 2025 to 55.6% in August 2026—is a more significant signal than the individual increase in positive or negative assessments.

“We are seeing the gradual formation of a more defined image of Uzbekistan. Some respondents are shifting from a neutral stance to a specific assessment of the country. At the same time, positive attitudes still significantly outweigh negative ones. This means that there is a sufficiently favorable foundation for the development of economic, educational, cultural, and humanitarian ties, but the image of Uzbekistan in Ukraine still requires a greater informational presence,” Urakin added.

The current results partially confirm this assessment: the neutral group remains the largest, but it has shrunk significantly compared to 2025. The simultaneous increase in both positive and negative responses indicates, above all, the gradual formation of a more defined attitude toward Uzbekistan.

The survey was conducted in August 2026 using an online self-administered questionnaire via the SunFlowerSociology panel among 800 Ukrainian citizens aged 18 and older. The sample is representative by age, gender, and region; the maximum theoretical margin of error for indicators at the 50% confidence level is ±3.5 percentage points.