Business news from Ukraine

Sweden remains among the countries with the highest level of positive perception among Ukrainians: in August 2026, 71.4% of respondents expressed a positive attitude toward it, while only 0.8% expressed a negative one. Compared to March, the share of positive assessments decreased slightly, but negative attitudes also declined, according to the Experts Club Information and Analytical Center.

According to the results of the August survey, 31.9% of Ukrainians have a completely positive attitude toward Sweden, and 39.5% have a mostly positive attitude. A neutral stance is held by 26.2% of respondents. Only 0.8% view the country mostly negatively; no entirely negative assessments were recorded in the survey, and another 1.6% were undecided.

The balance between positive and negative assessments stands at plus 70.6 percentage points. By this measure, Sweden ranks among the highest of all countries included in the study. Positive attitudes outnumber negative ones by nearly 90 to 1.

In March 2026, 72.5% of respondents viewed Sweden positively: 35% viewed it entirely positively and 37.5% viewed it mostly positively. At that time, 24.7% of respondents held a neutral stance, while negative attitudes accounted for about 1.2%.

Thus, over the course of five months, the share of positive assessments decreased by only 1.1 percentage points—from 72.5% to 71.4%. Negative responses decreased by 0.4 percentage points, while the neutral segment increased by 1.5 percentage points—from 24.7% to 26.2%. The balance between positive and negative attitudes remained virtually unchanged—from approximately plus 71.3 to plus 70.6 percentage points.

At the same time, there was a certain redistribution within the positive segment. The share of fully positive assessments decreased from 35% to 31.9%, while the share of mostly positive assessments rose from 37.5% to 39.5%. This indicates a moderate decline in the intensity of positive attitudes rather than a deterioration in the country’s overall image.

Oleksandr Pozniy, director of the research firm Active Group, commented on the previous wave of the survey by highlighting the stability of Ukrainians’ attitudes toward Sweden.

“Sweden remains a country with a very high level of trust among Ukrainians, and this is evident from the structure of the responses. At the same time, we are observing a certain increase in the share of neutral assessments, which indicates not a change in attitude but a decrease in its intensity. This is a typical effect for countries that are not constantly in the spotlight,” Pozniy noted.

The new results effectively confirm this trend. The proportion of neutral responses continued to rise moderately, but this was not accompanied by an increase in negative attitudes. Sweden remains one of the countries with the most consistently positive image in Ukrainian society.

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