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2.3 Polls & Sociology
Ukraine climbs five places in new edition of annual World Competitiveness Yearbook. Ukraine was one of the biggest climbers in the latest edition of the World Competitiveness Yearbook, rising five places to occupy fifty-fourth position between Slovakia and Peru. The annual ranking, produced by the Swiss International Institute for Management Development (IMD) annually since 1989, incorporates 235 indicators from each of the 63 ranked economies. The ranking takes into account a wide range of “hard” statistics such as unemployment, GDP and government spending on health and education, as well as “soft” data from an Executive Opinion Survey covering topics such as social cohesion, globalization and corruption. Ukraine’s improved position mirrors similar progress in other global rankings including the World Bank’s annual Ease of Doing Business survey, which has seen Ukraine climbing consistently from a low point of one hundred and fortieth position in the 2013 report to occupy the seventy-first place in the 2019 edition
Half of Ukrainians (48.9%) would vote for Ukraine's accession to Nato if a referendum were held, while and a quarter (23.2%) would be happy to adopt neutrality, according to Ukrainian Institute for Social Research and the Social Monitoring Center. At the same time, 16% of Ukrainians would not participate in the referendum on joining NATO or legislatively securing non-aligned status, and 11.8% found it difficult to answer the question.
Some 56.7% of Ukrainians would now support the country's accession to the EU in a referendum, while 19.4% would support restoring or strengthening economic ties with Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and other CIS countries. Some 13.5% would not participate in such a referendum and 10.4% found it difficult to answer the question.
Almost half of Ukrainians are ready to support the decision on granting autonomy within Ukraine to Russia-occupied areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions for the cessation of hostilities and the peaceful settlement of the conflict in Donbas, according to a survey conducted from June 13 to June 21 by the Oleksandr Yaremenko Ukrainian Institute for Social Research and the Social Monitoring Center. Some 49.5% of respondents said they would support autonomy (29.1% said they could support autonomy and 20.4% saying they definitely would support autonomy). Some 30.7% of respondents said they would not support autonomy (definitely not – 17.5%, probably not – 13.2%, with 19.8% having trouble answering the question.
About 70% of Ukrainian citizens are ready to vote at a referendum for Ukraine's accession to the European Union and a little more than half would support their country's joining NATO, according to a poll conducted by the SOCIS Social and Marketing Research Center. The poll results were released at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Friday. Some 68.1% of respondents said they would vote for Ukraine's accession to the EU, 17.1% would vote against it, 5.9% would not take part in the referendum, and 8.9% refused to answer or could know answer. Some 51.1% would answer affirmatively to the question of a referendum on Ukraine's entry into NATO, 29.4% would vote against it, 7.4% would not participate in the referendum, and 12.1% refused to answer or could not answer.
More than half of the citizens of Ukraine believe that Russia can pose a real threat to the independence and territorial integrity of the Ukrainian state, according to the results of a study by the Socis Center for Social and Marketing Research, released at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine. Some 55.9% of respondents believe that the threat of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia to the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine continues to be real. Some 31.9% of those polled consider such a threat rather exaggerated. Some 12.3% refused to answer or did not know what to say.
Around 70% of Ukrainian citizens believe that the situation in the country
23 UKRAINE Country Report July 2019 www.intellinews.com