Most people in Russia and Ukraine believe their countries should be independent but have open borders without visas or customs for each other’s citizens, the Levada Analytical Center and the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) said in their joint survey.
The opinion was expressed by 52% of Russians polled by Levada and 48% of Ukrainians polled by KIIS. A total of 25% of Russian respondents and 38% of Ukrainian respondents disagreed.
Seventeen percent of polled Russians and 4% of polled Ukrainians said they wanted Russia and Ukraine to be a single state.
The survey showed that people in both countries are well disposed towards each other. Eighty-two percent of polled Russians declared their warm feelings for Ukrainians, including 25% who said their attitude was very good. The percentage stood at 77% and 23%, respectively, in Ukraine.
Negative feelings were expressed by 13% of polled Russians and 14% of polled Ukrainians. At the same time, 85% of Russian respondents and 69% of Ukrainian respondents exhibited negative sentiments towards the leaders of each other’s countries, the pollsters said.
Levada polled 1,600 people older than 18 in 137 populated localities in 50 Russian constituent territories on February 15-20. KIIS polled 2,042 respondents in Ukraine on February 8-20.
As many as two million Ukrainians have been able to benefit from a visa-free regime with the European Union, President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine has said.
“Two million Ukrainians have already used a visa-free regime with the EU! The visa-free regime does work!” Poroshenko wrote on his Facebook page on January 3 morning.
The Ukrainian head of state said Ukraine enjoys a visa-free regime with more than 100 countries.
“At present, we have a visa-free regime with more than 100 countries. And we continue to open the world for Ukraine and Ukraine for the world,” Poroshenko said.
Ukrainians registered 11,000 cars with foreign license plates, which were registered in the temporary importation or transit regimes, in one month, the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine reported on its website on Thursday.
“From November 25 through December 26, 2018, citizens cleared 11,000 vehicles with foreign license plates, which have been imported to the customs territory of Ukraine since January 1, 2015 until the new rules of importation of these vehicles took effect,” the authority said.
Almost 9,600 out of cleared vehicles stayed in the country in violation of the Ukrainian legislation, the State Fiscal Service said.
On December 26, almost 1,400 vehicles were cleared.
As reported, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada passed bills cutting the excise duty on vehicles and toughening supervision over the movement and use of vehicles registered in other states. The preferential excise duty (with the 0.5 factor) was set for owners of cars with foreign licenses plates for clearing their vehicles within 90 calendar days.
More than 60% of Ukrainians are not satisfied with how democracy has developed in Ukraine and more than 54% think they would be unable to resist a government decision limiting their lawful rights and interests, a poll conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine with the support of the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation has shown. According to the results of the opinion poll announced at a press conference in Kyiv on December 21, 26,3% of those polled are not happy at all with how democracy has developed in Ukraine, 35,1% are rather not happy, 16.1% are rather happy, 1.4% are entirely happy, and 21.1% were unable to answer.
When asked about their feelings about the future of Ukraine, 20,1% of the people said that feel optimistic, 18.2% said they felt desperate, 23.4% said they felt confused, 14.1% said they felt pessimistic, 43.3% said they felt hopeful, 37.6% said they felt anxious, 15.2% said they felt interested, 21.1% said they felt scared, 11.5% said they felt confident, 3.7% said they felt nonchalant, 5.1% said they felt happy, and 4.2% said they felt joyful.
Also, 47.9% of those polled said the chances for mass rallies in their towns against declining living standards and for the protection of their rights are unlikely, and 29.1% said such chances are rather high.
In addition, 54.1% of the respondents said if the government of Ukraine made a decision that would limit their lawful rights and interests, they would not be able to do anything with it, 15.4% said they would be able to undertake something, and 30.5% could not provide an answer.
The poll was conducted from September 13 to 29, 2018 in all the regions of Ukraine for the exception of Crimea and the occupied territories in Donbas. A total of 1,800 people were polled.
There are almost two million Ukrainians in Poland who are working in Poland, Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz has said. “According to different estimates, almost two million Ukrainians are already in Poland working in key areas of the economy: construction, agriculture, services. We appreciate their efforts and contribution to the development of our state,” he said at a meeting of the Ukrainian-Polish Partnership Forum in Kyiv.
In addition, the Polish foreign minister said almost 40,000 from Ukraine study at Polish universities.
The Polish minister added that in 2017 the Polish consuls issued 1.2 million visas to Ukrainian citizens.
Some 72% of Ukrainians are ready to support a woman candidate in the presidential elections if the party they trust nominated her as a presidential candidate, according to a study by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) conducted in October-November 2018. Only 36% of respondents expressed readiness to support a Jewish candidate, and 26% said they would vote for a dark-skinned candidate.
“Compared to 2011, when we first conducted such a survey, the support of women and Jews remained almost unchanged, while more people, from 18% to 26%, said they would support a dark-skinned candidate, KIIS said.
The study was similar to that conducted by Gallup in the United States since 1937. At the same time, the report notes that in 2015, for each of these three questions (about women, Jews and blacks), more than 90% of Americans (92%, 91% and 92%, respectively) said they were ready to vote for them.
However, previously these figures were lower in the United States. “Attitudes of Americans towards women candidates increased as a whole. Ukrainian data correspond to American data from the early 1970s,” KIIS said.
Ukrainian attitudes towards candidates of Jewish nationality and blacks are significantly lower than they were in the United States for the entire observation period. In particular, in 1937 only 46% of Americans responded positively to a question about Jewish candidates, and 37% of respondents answered positively to a question about dark-skinned candidates in 1958, when it was asked in interviews.
The all-Ukrainian public opinion poll of KIIS was conducted from October 26 to November 8, 2018. Some 2,044 people living in 110 settlements throughout Ukraine were questioned in a personal interview. The margin of error of the poll does not exceed 3.3%.
