79% of Ukrainians would not travel to US or EU even if they received citizenship
According to Ukrinform, this is evidenced by the results of a survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in September 2024.
As noted, in October 2020, KIIS conducted an all-Ukrainian telephone survey, which, among other things, asked the question: “If you were granted US or EU citizenship unconditionally, would you move to these countries for permanent residence?” At that time, 28% of all adult Ukrainians were ready to move abroad. In September 2022, six months after the full-scale invasion, KIIS repeated the question, and the share of those who wanted to move abroad dropped to 7% (the decline was, of course, due to the fact that some people who wanted to move fulfilled their desire against the backdrop of the invasion, but also to a large extent due to the growth of patriotism and optimism about the future of Ukraine), according to sociologists.
In September 2024 (after two and a half years of full-scale invasion), KIIS asked this question again. The willingness to move abroad has increased to 19% compared to September 2022, but remains significantly lower than in 2020. “At the same time, the vast majority of Ukrainians - 79% - continue to say that even if they were granted US or EU citizenship, they would still stay in Ukraine,” the report says.
At the same time, according to the KIIS, there is a trend towards an increase in the share of those who are ready to move abroad in all regions of Ukraine, but, firstly, everywhere (except the east) the current figure is lower than in 2020 (in the east, the figures are the same as in 2020). Secondly, in all regions, the vast majority (75-81%) would not like to move abroad, but would rather stay in Ukraine.
According to the survey, there is also an increase in the share of those who would like to move abroad among all age groups, but among all age groups, 74-86% want to stay in Ukraine.
In particular, among 18-29-year-old Ukrainians in 2020, almost half (46%) would like to move abroad. By September 2022, the figure had dropped to 13%, and then by September 2024, it rose to 26%. “Although the growth is significant, 74% of Ukrainians under the age of 30 still want to stay in Ukraine. A similar trend is typical for 30-44-year-olds (among whom 75% do not want to move from Ukraine),” KIIS said.
According to the survey, the vast majority (70%) of men aged 25-55, i.e., the mobilization age, would not like to move from Ukraine. Only 27% would like to. Among women aged 25-55, 80% would not like to move from Ukraine, while 18% would like to.
“In 2020, significantly more men would like to move abroad than women. At the same time, in any case, the vast majority of Ukrainian men of mobilization age would not want to leave Ukraine even if they had legal opportunities,” KIIS emphasizes.
On September 1-6, KIIS conducted its own all-Ukrainian public opinion poll “Omnibus”, to which it added a question about the desire to move to the US or the EU on its own initiative.
A total of 1,022 respondents were interviewed via computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI) based on a random sample of mobile phone numbers in all regions of Ukraine (government-controlled territory). The survey was conducted with adult citizens of Ukraine (18 years of age and older) who resided in the government-controlled territory of Ukraine at the time of the survey. The sample did not include residents of the territories temporarily not controlled by the Ukrainian government (however, some respondents were IDPs who moved from the occupied territories), and the survey was not conducted with citizens who left the country after February 24, 2022.
Formally, under normal circumstances, the statistical error of such a sample (with a probability of 0.95 and taking into account the design effect of 1.3) did not exceed 4.1% for indicators close to 50%; 3.5% for indicators close to 25%; 2.5% for indicators close to 10%; 1.8% for indicators close to 5%.
In times of war, in addition to the above formal error, a certain systematic deviation is added. In general, KIIS believes that the results obtained still retain high representativeness and allow for a fairly reliable analysis of public sentiment.
