Page 19 - UKRRptSept23

Sociologists also note that the number of respondents who expect a long war with Russia is increasing. Some 42% of Ukrainians believe that the war may last more than a year more, 34% from six months to a year, and almost 10%, for a few more months.
The Ukrainian sociological survey has been conducted annually since 1994. This year it was conducted from June 17-27 by telephone interview in all regions of Ukraine, except for Russian-occupied territories in the Donbas and in Crimea.
Since May 2022, the share of Ukrainians reluctant to make territorial concessions to end the war has remained roughly the same, despite Russia's regular attacks on critical and civilian infrastructure.
In May, a KIIS poll showed that 84% of Ukrainians believe that territorial concessions to Russia are unacceptable, even if the war lasts longer and there are other threats.
The mood of Ukrainian businesses is improving, and entrepreneurs expect the war's end in one to three years. Entrepreneurs in four strategic regions, Lviv, Odesa, Kharkiv, and Dnipro, improved their business performance ratings compared to 2022. According to the EBA, on average, these ratings increased by 0.3 points on a scale from 1 to 5. When planning their activities, most companies focus on the end of the war from the perspective of one to three years. Businesses in the Kharkiv region have the gloomiest forecasts regarding the duration of the war. Common challenges for most areas are mobilization, predictability of the reservation procedure, the outflow of the labor force abroad, and foreign business trips. In general, businesses in Lviv assessed the situation at 2.64 points (2.52 in 2022), in Odesa at 2.47 points (2.15 points), in Dnipro at 2.25 points (1.88), and in Kharkiv at 1.62 points (1.28 points). Last year, entrepreneurs of the Western region rated business conditions the highest among the group and the Kharkiv region rated them the worst.
According to UN data, about 76% of Ukrainian refugees intend to return home, and 15% have declared their firm wish to move back to Ukraine, Karen Whiting, the Deputy Representative of the UN Refugee Agency in Ukraine, said during an appearance on the (Un)Safe Country podcast on Aug. 16.
The flow of people leaving Ukraine has significantly declined since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion and war against Ukraine, although 2.4 million Ukrainian citizens who left the country are yet to return, OpenDataBot, a platform specializing in tracking and analyzing demographic trends, has reported.
More than 90% of Ukrainians find the demands presented by Russian President Vladimir Putin to give up territory in exchange for the cessation of aggression to be unacceptable, a survey conducted by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation and the Razumkov Center's sociological service found they reported on August 23.
In contrast, only a mere 4.7% of those surveyed found such demands to be acceptable, underscoring the widespread consensus against this proposition.
Almost 74% of participants regarded the demand for Ukraine to forgo NATO accession as unacceptable. Similarly, 80% found the prospect of reducing the size of the Ukrainian Armed Forces during peacetime to be unacceptable.
However, a smaller portion of respondents, 18% and 13% respectively, deemed these latter two demands acceptable.
19 UKRAINE Country Report September 2023 www.intellinews.com