As fighting continues in Ukraine’s embattled east, popularity of NATO is growing. A new poll has found that 43.6 percent of Ukrainians now support joining NATO. The poll was conducted by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation and asked the question “Which option would you consider best for ensuring Ukraine’s security?”
Most
of those polled said
NATO would provide the best security guarantees, but
14.8 percent said that a military alliance with Russian and other
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) would, and with 22.2 percent
saying that Ukraine’s status as a non-aligned nation provided the
best guarantees.
Compared
to
March 2012, the
number of supporters
of NATO has grown from 13 percent to nearly 44 percent. Meanwhile
supporters of Ukraine’s non-aligned status fell from 42 percent to
22 percent, and those who support a military alliance with Russia and
CIS countries fell from 26 percent to just below 15 percent.
Support
for NATO is
highest in western Ukraine, with 78.3 percent wanting
to join the alliance. In central Ukraine, the share of proponents is
52.7
percent. Support was lowest in the Donbas with 5.7 percent in favor,
and southern Ukraine with 24.8 percent in favor.
Since
Crimea was annexed by Russia in March and fighting erupted in eastern
Ukraine, security has been a major concern for the country’s
leadership. The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances that
insisted on Ukraine’s territorial integrity was signed by Russia,
the US, and the UK in 1994, but failed to halt Russia’s annexation
of Crimea in 2014.
Joining
NATO has traditionally been unpopular in Ukraine where the Soviet
representation of NATO as an aggressive imperialist bloc continued to
be prevalent. In recent months political support for joining NATO has
grown with President Petro
Poroshenko
tweeting on Sep. 25 that he had instructed the cabinet minister to
revoke Ukraine’s non-aligned status.
The
party of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko,
Batkivshchyna, has made NATO membership its
major election issue, insisting on a nationwide referendum to decide
whether Ukraine will join NATO.
Russia
has long said it regards NATO membership for Ukraine as a national
security threat.
The
poll was conducted nationwide in 110 locations in all regions
of Ukraine except the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Luhansk
Oblast. During the survey there was intense fighting in the
Luhansk Oblast and instead the quota for Donetsk Oblast was
increased. In total 2,035 questionnaires were collected. The margin
of error is 2.2 percent.
