Do Ukrainians support teaching Russian in schools? Survey

According to a poll conducted by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology, the majority of Ukrainians are against the study of the Russian language in schools.

Specifically, 52% of those surveyed are against children learning Russian in schools.

42% support preservation of Russian language teaching in Ukrainian schools. However, the majority of those who are not against Russian language teaching want this language to be given as much or less time than other foreign languages.

6% believe that Russian should be given more time than other foreign languages, and 3% believe that Russian should be taught at the same level as Ukrainian.

Sociologists point out that this issue has been raised many times before in sociological studies. For example, in 1998 and 2019. And back in 2019, only 8% of Ukrainians thought that it was not worth teaching Russian at all in schools, whereas now there are 52% of such people.

At the regional level, the number of people against learning Russian, compared to previous surveys, has also increased. For example, in the West of Ukraine there were only 22% in 2019, while now there are 64%. At the same time, the increase in the South and the East is more symptomatic. In the South, only 1% thought Russian should not be taught in 2019, while now almost half of the population (49%) does. In the East, none of the respondents to the 2019 survey were in favour of excluding the Russian language from school teaching, and now 30% are.

The survey was conducted from 14-22 February 2023. A total of 1,017 respondents residing in all regions of Ukraine were interviewed. The sample did not include residents of territories that are temporarily not under the control of the Ukrainian authorities and the survey was not conducted with citizens who left the country after February 24, 2022.

The statistical error of such a sample (with a probability of 0.95 and taking into account the design effect of 1.1) did not exceed 3.4% for indicators close to 50%, 3.0% for indicators close to 25%, 2.1%. - for indicators close to 10%, 1.5% for indicators close to 5%.

In war conditions, a certain systematic bias is added in addition to the above formal error.