Page 16 - UKRRptJul21

Support for the pro-presidential Servant of the People party had been statistically greater than that of the European Solidarity party of former president Petro Poroshenko in April. As of the latest poll, however, the two are within the level of statistical error, at 20.3% and 18.5% of decided voters.
The Fatherland party of ex-PM Yuliya Tymoshenko and pro-Russian Opposition Platform for Life party are also close, with 12.0% and 11.9% support from decided voters, respectively. Support for both of these parties has dropped since April, but within the margin of error. The Strength and Honor party also breaches the 5% support level needed to gain seats in the Verkhovna Rada, at 7.2% of voters.
The relative stabilization of voter support shows that President Zelenskiy has not been able to convince significantly more voters to support him. Despite the core positive changes since April, namely a slight easing of tension on the border with Russia, and the increasing roll-out of the government’s COVID-19 vaccination program, nothing has gone smoothly enough for him to take credit or in such a way as to paint him as a victim of circumstance.
The demographic picture emerging from 2020 looks quite grim. Rosstat’s latest release shows that Russia lost 700,000 in population for 2020 after losing 317,000 in 2019 to natural decline/deaths. And that’s before counting the continued excess mortality caused bay COVID this year. The 700,000 figure is a revision upwards from the 500,000 announced by Tatiana Golikova and the ‘social’ bloc within government handling demography and related problems as of January. The problem, of course, is that in pre-COVID years, inward migration could cover most losses to natural causes. The 2020 migration figure is just guesstimated based off the scale of the loss of foreign nationals in the country as of 1Q this year, but is meant to show the scale of the shock compared to usual for the Russian economy. Following is in 000s and 2014 was excluded by Rosstat cause it’s an anomalous year and the population jumps post-Crimea annexation
16 UKRAINE Country Report July 2021 www.intellinews.com