Absolute majority of Ukrainians believe that all Russians responsible for aggression

This is evidenced by the results of the poll conducted by the face-to-face method by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation together with the Center for Political Sociology on June 5-15, 2023, Ukrinform reports.

According to the poll results, 78% of respondents share the opinion that all Russians are responsible for the aggression against Ukraine. Most of those who disagree with this statement are those who live in the southern regions (30%), consider Russian their native language (37%), or use Russian mainly as the language of communication at home (32%). However, even among Russian speakers, the absolute majority places the responsibility for the start of the war on the Russian people.

The poll also showed that Ukrainian society highly supports collective forms of punishment of Russians for war crimes. In particular, only 21% of respondents believe that the direct perpetrators and accomplices of these crimes must be punished. A total of 37% of respondents insist that the Russian leadership, the military command, and the leadership of military companies like Wagner must be punished. Another 36% believe that all Russians must be punished.

In general, according to the poll results, the majority of Ukrainians (57%) want to see punished all those who are directly involved in planning, approving, organizing, and committing war crimes.

At the same time, a significant share of citizens (36%) have the most radical approach to punishing Russia. The most radical citizens on this issue live in the central (40%) and southern (39%) regions.

Despite the massive and merciless nature of the war crimes committed by the Russians, the majority of Ukrainians (68%) believe that the prosecution and punishment of criminals should take place within the framework of national and international law. At the same time, every fourth respondent is convinced that such criminals should be punished extrajudicially. The largest share of interviewees who are in favor of punishing Russian war criminals without a trial live in the central (34%) and eastern regions (25%), and the least (11%) live in the south of Ukraine.

Almost 16% of surveyed Ukrainians across the country said that they had witnessed war crimes committed by the Russians, another 5% said that they could witness such actions. These are primarily respondents who, as of the beginning of the invasion, lived in Donetsk and Luhansk regions (53%), Zaporizhzhia (73%), Kherson (80%), Mykolaiv (34%), Kharkiv (26%), Chernihiv (21%), Kyiv and Vinnytsia (19% each), Dnipro (17%) and Sumy (15%) regions.