Over a quarter of Ukrainians (26.9 percent) believe that the Orthodox believers should unite around the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP), 23.4 percent want the Orthodox churches to be united into a single church, which will seek its independence, whereas almost one in ten (9.2 percent) believes that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church should remain part of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), according to a survey conducted by the Razumkov Center on March 23-28, 2018.
The results of the survey were made public on Thursday, April 26.
According to the survey, 22.7 percent of respondents do not care about the prospects of Orthodoxy in Ukraine in this context.
Among respondents who are parishioners of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, one in four (25 percent) is of the opinion that it is necessary to unite Orthodox churches in Ukraine into a single church that will seek its independence, 13.5 percent believe that it is necessary to unite around the UOC-KP, and 42.3 percent want the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to remain an integral part of the ROC.
The majority of respondents (55.4 percent), who belong to the UOC-KP, stand for unification around this church, and 27.1 percent of them consider it expedient to unite into a single church. Only 3.1 percent support the view that the Orthodox Church in Ukraine should remain part of the ROC.
At the same time, 35.3 percent of those polled who are parishioners of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) are in favor of unification into a single church, and 26.8 percent agree that Orthodox believers need to unite around the UOC-KP.
The need for Orthodox believers to unite around the Kyiv Patriarchate is most of all supported in the central (35.5 percent), southern (30.6 percent) and western (29.4 percent) regions and least of all in the eastern regions (10.3 percent).
The unification of Orthodox churches into a single church is backed by 36.4 percent of respondents in the west of Ukraine, 21.1 percent in the south, 20.8 percent in the center, and 16.7 percent in the east.
The view that the UOC-MP should remain part of the ROC is shared most of all by residents of the east of Ukraine (18.2 percent). The respondents in the southern (9.5 percent), central (8.2 percent) and western (0.6 percent) regions are less agreeable with this statement.
The nationwide sociological survey was conducted with the support of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung office in Ukraine in all regions of Ukraine, with the exception of Crimea and temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. A total of 2,016 respondents aged over 18 years were interviewed. The poll’s margin of error does not exceed 2.3 percent.
