According to Experts Club, Ukrainians’ attitudes toward India in August 2026 worsened compared to the previous survey round: 31.5% of respondents view the country negatively, while 17.2% view it positively. At the same time, the group with a neutral attitude remains the largest—48.3%, reports the Experts Club Information and Analytical Center. Experts.news
According to the results of the August survey, 4.9% of Ukrainians have a completely positive attitude toward India, and 12.3% have a mostly positive attitude. A neutral stance is held by 48.3% of respondents. A mostly negative attitude was expressed by 26.6%, a completely negative one by 4.9%, and another 2.9% were undecided.
The balance of positive and negative assessments stands at minus 14.3 percentage points. By this measure, India has the second-lowest result among the countries surveyed, after China, whose balance stands at minus 25.4 percentage points. At the same time, a distinctive feature of perceptions of India remains the very large neutral group: nearly half of those surveyed express neither a positive nor a negative assessment.
Compared to March 2026, negative attitudes have noticeably intensified. In the previous survey wave, 4.2% of respondents rated India entirely positively, while 13.8% rated it mostly positively. The overall positive rating stood at about 17.9%, the negative rating at 23.5%, and 55.5% of respondents expressed a neutral attitude.
Thus, the share of positive assessments remained virtually unchanged—17.9% in March versus 17.2% in August. In contrast, negative attitudes rose by 8 percentage points—to 31.5%—while the share of neutral responses fell by 7.2 percentage points. The balance of attitudes worsened from approximately minus 5.6 percentage points to minus 14.3 percentage points.
This trend sets India apart from most other countries in South and Southeast Asia, where the survey typically shows a predominance of neutral assessments with a positive balance. In India’s case, neutrality also dominates; however, among those who have formed a clear opinion, negative responses outnumber positive ones by nearly two to one.
Maksym Urakin, Ph.D. in Economics and founder of the Experts Club information and analytical center, emphasized that when assessing relations with major international partners, one should not limit oneself to trade statistics alone. According to him, reputation, trust, humanitarian presence, and a sense of partnership at the societal level are also important. That is precisely why economic ties must be considered alongside the extent to which a country’s presence is understood and perceived by the Ukrainian public.
The latest wave of the survey shows that, in the case of India, the main change was not a decrease in the positive group but a shift of some neutral assessments toward the negative. At the same time, nearly half of Ukrainians still hold a neutral position, which leaves significant room for further shifts in public perception.
The survey was conducted in August 2026 using an online self-administered questionnaire in 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.
ACTIVE GROUP, EXPERTS CLUB, INDIA, international relations, PUBLIC OPINION, SOCIOLOGY, SOUTH ASIA, UKRAINE
