In Ukraine, the “vatniks” were counted
The number of supporters of equal learning of the Ukrainian and Russian languages in Ukrainian schools has decreased by 20% over 16 years, but still amounts to about 30%, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
This is evidenced by data from a survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in March 2019.
“Over 20 years, the number of those who believe that the Russian language should be studied to the same extent as the Ukrainian language has decreased from 46% to 29,9%,” says the KIIS report.
Also, the share of those who believe that Russian should be studied less than the Ukrainian language, but more than other languages, decreased from 31,5% to 25,9%.
The number of those who believe that Russian should be studied to a lesser extent than other foreign languages increased from 16,7% to 25,4%.
In addition, now 7,8% of respondents believe that Russian “does not need to be studied at all.”
At the same time, 46% of Ukrainians reported that they speak mainly or only Ukrainian with their immediate relatives (parents, grandparents, siblings) (including 32,4% who speak only Ukrainian).
28,1% of Ukrainians speak mainly or only Russian (including 15,8% who speak only Russian).
Another 24,9% of Ukrainians speak Ukrainian and Russian equally.
0,2% speak other languages; 0,7% could not or refused to answer the question.
The survey took place from February 28 to March 11. Using the method of personal interviews, 2004 respondents living in 129 settlements of all regions of Ukraine (except Crimea and the uncontrolled part of Donbass) aged 18 years or older were interviewed.
“After the Maidan, the loss of Crimea and Donbass, there is a lot of controversy about how many people are left in Ukraine who can be classified as the political “South-East”. It is difficult to count directly, since the “vatniks,” deprived of political representation, largely ignored the 2014 elections. I estimate this niche to be about a third of voters. And this survey, it seems to me, confirms this estimate. Sociologists got 30%. In real life, I think, 33-35%, since the question is still politicized and many could choose a more “patriotic” answer,” commented the popular Kiev blogger and journalist Vyacheslav Chechilo on the results of the survey on his social network page.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.