Page 12 - UKRRptOct21

Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Joe Biden are at the top of the list, reports FPRI BMB Ukraine.
Despite Merkel’s lackluster meeting with Zelenskiy in Kyiv in August, 73% of Ukrainians view her positively. Meanwhile, 64% have a positive attitude toward Biden. “Over the past few months, attitudes towards the President of the United States have improved somewhat, and attitudes towards the German Chancellor have deteriorated somewhat,” the Rating Group noted (it’s also worth noting that the survey was conducted from September 2–4, immediately after Zelenskiy’s long-awaited White House visit).
Coming in third and fourth are French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish President Andrzej Duda, who were positively assessed by 57% and 54% of respondents, respectively. Remarkably, less than 20% of respondents had a negative view of the aforementioned world leaders.
Unsurprisingly, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s received a negative assessment from the vast majority of respondents — 81% (only 15% had positive feelings towards Putin).
Notably, attitudes towards Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko have also taken a turn for the worse in recent years. According to the Rating Group’s latest survey results, 59% of respondents say they view him in a negative light, while 34% view him positively. By comparison, in November 2019, the Rating Group found that 66% of those surveyed had a positive attitude toward Lukashenko (this indicator had already fallen to 45% by November 2020).
Regarding recent hot topics in foreign policy news, 66% of those surveyed said they were aware of the recent Crimean Platform Summit and 50% gave it a positive assessment. Among those who were well informed about the summit, this latter indicator was even higher: 80%. Respondents were also highly aware of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline: 81% either knew about or had heard of it, and only 18% knew nothing about it. That said, 41% said Ukraine had no chance of stopping its construction.
Opinion polls confirm that most Ukrainians support accession to EU and NATO. According to a recent polling asking, if a referendum on Ukraine's accession to the European Union was to be held in the near future, 61.4% of Ukrainians would vote for it, while 26.4% - against. Ukraine's accession to NATO is supported by 57.4% of the respondents, and 29.3% are against it.
12 UKRAINE Country Report October 2021 www.intellinews.com