Idea of Russian as official language backed by 30% of Ukrainians, with 55% against it - poll

More than half of Ukrainian residents do not support the idea of Russian as an official language in Ukraine, while 30% are "in favor" of it, the results of the poll conducted by Ukraine's National Science Academy Sociology Institute in cooperation with the Intellectual Perspective charity foundation suggested.

According to the results of the poll that were published on Thursday, 30% of Ukrainians supported the idea of letting Russian to obtain the status of an official language in their country and 55.5% did not.

However, 42% of the respondents predominantly speak the Ukrainian language in the family circle, while 32% mostly speak Russian and the remaining 25% may opt to speak either of them, according to circumstances.

The attitude towards the idea changed over time. In particular, back in 2000, the official status of Russian had the support of 51% of Ukrainians, with 33% against it. Later the number of supporters decreased and that of the opponents grew and they became almost equal in 2012 (43% "in favor" and 42% "against"). The share of the opponents started to prevail in 2013 (49% "against" and 36.5% "in favor").

The Ukrainian nationwide poll was conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the Intellectual Perspective charity foundation from June 13 - July 4. It used a quota sample representing adult residents at least 18 years of age. The respondents were from all Ukrainian regions, except for the Donbas regions not controlled by Kyiv. The sociologists interviewed respondents face to face in their places of residence.

In total, 1,802 people were polled. The margin of sampling error is 2.3%.

For the purpose of comparison, the sociologists published the data of nationwide polls conducted by the Institute in previous years as part of sociological monitoring (i.e. repeatedly conducted polls using the same method).

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