Veterans of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are not needed by either the state or society – survey

The attitude of Ukrainians towards the government’s fulfillment of its obligations to veterans has sharply deteriorated. Expectations for the future of veterans of the Russian-Ukrainian war are also worsening.

This is stated in a nationwide survey called “The Image of Veterans in Ukrainian Society,” conducted by the Ukrainian Veterans Foundation of the Ministry of Veterans Affairs and the Sociological Group “Rating.”

79% of Ukrainians believe that society respects veterans. However, the proportion of those who think otherwise has increased, with 18% saying that society does not respect veterans. Last year, only 6% of respondents held this view.

Furthermore, an increasing number of Ukrainians (49%) are convinced that the state does not sufficiently fulfill its obligations to veterans of the Russian-Ukrainian war. As of September 2023, 33% hold a positive opinion regarding the government’s fulfillment of its obligations.

“The survey reveals a growing expectation of potential risks in the lives of veterans, such as the risk of unemployment (rising from 34% to 42% in a year), conflicts within veterans’ families (from 31% to 46%), substance abuse (from 31% to 43%), suicides (from 18% to 28%), and legal violations (from 13% to 23%). These risks are felt more acutely by the families of veterans who have been in combat since 2014,” the research states.

Deputy Director of the Sociological Group “Rating,” Lyubomyr Mysov, noted that such assessments are not surprising because they depend on the public mood.

“In reality, they cannot be positive because the full-scale war has been going on for a year and a half already. My main message is to be realistic. These data are objective, as roughly 1 million people are in the Armed Forces, the population is experiencing economic hardships, there are 5 million refugees forced to leave their homes due to the war. So, overall trust ratings are decreasing, and they depend on public sentiment. Moreover, different scenarios involving mobilization are taking place. This affects the overall assessment of society toward anyone in military uniform. This assessment will definitely fluctuate depending on events, but trust in soldiers on the front lines, in veterans, remains very high,” he emphasized.

Specialists from the Sociological Group “Rating” conducted telephone surveys of 1,000 respondents from September 5 to 7, 2023. The sample is representative in terms of age, gender, and settlement type. The margin of error for the representativeness of the study with a confidence probability of 0.95 is no more than 3.1%.