You're reading: Ukraine still prefer joining EU to CU membership, half of nation wants to join NATO – poll

A number of 64% of Ukrainians prefer country's joining the European Union rather than the country's accession to the Customs Union (17%), and 19% are undecided yet, according to the poll made by the Rating Sociological Group. 

“From April 2014, there was an increase in the number of people preferring joining the EU from 55% to today’s 64%, under parallel drop of the supporters of the Customs Union’s membership from 24% in April to 17% in November. Joining the EU enjoyed support of people in west, north, centre, east and south. For example, in Donbas a majority of residents uphold Ukraine’s accession to the Customs Union,” reads a press release from the Rating posted on Thursday morning.

Almost half of the respondents, 48%, support an initiative of the lawful cancelation of Ukraine’s NATO non-ally status, just 28% is against this. A fourth part of the respondents found it difficult to say now.

The poll findings show that were a referendum held offering Ukrainians to join NATO, a half (51%) of the respondents would accept this offer, when 15% would oppose. A fourth part of those polled hasn’t decided yet or even wouldn’t go to such referendum.

The social survey also shows that the proportion of supporters of Ukraine’s NATO membership is 51% this November, down from 40% in April, so the number of followers of this idea is constantly growing.

Meanwhile, the number of the opponents of joining the NATO dropped from 46% in April to 25%. The biggest number of those, who uphold NATO’s membership are the citizens of west, north and center. On the east there is nearly an equal number of sympathizers and opponents of NATO, while on the south and in Donbas there are more opponents, the sociologists said.

The research was held in a “face-to-face” format from November 6 to November 13 polling 2,000 respondents from 18 years old. The poll’s margin of error is 2.8%.