Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine has been going on for nine months. The population of Ukraine has been facing the consequences of the war both for their personal safety and for their own and their family’s economic welfare. Central and local government bodies offer some help to those affected by the war, especially people who have lost their homes, have been forced to move to another locality, etc. Some of these support programs had existed even before the full-scale invasion of February 24; other measures have only just recently begun to be implemented. The draft Restoration Plan presented in July also lists some more long-term plans to support the population during and after the war.

All of this is happening while the state budget revenue is shrinking and the time when the war will end is unclear. Many international institutions predict that the longer the war goes on, the higher share of the country’s population will end up in ever more vulnerable situations, while the resources that would allow people to hold on without any help from the outside will gradually be exhausted.

Since the first weeks of the full-scale war, the Cedos team has been collecting and analyzing the data on how the war affects different aspects of people’s lives and Ukrainian society. In view of the socioeconomic impact of the war, in October we also decided to conduct a nationwide survey focusing on what kinds of support people would like to receive from the government and what they think about the existing support programs.

The findings of the survey can be useful for a better understanding of the extent to which the existing support programs meet the population’s needs as well as the extent to which they match the dominant ideas as to which measures and policies are fair, necessary and acceptable during wartime.

This text consists of a description of the survey’s methodology and sample as well as a presentation of its key findings. First we present the results of an analysis of the answers related to socioeconomic support in general, and at the end we focus in a bit more detail on questions related to providing the population with housing.

The survey was conducted by the Info Sapiens company upon the Cedos Think Tank’s commission in the period between October 11 and 18, 2022, in the Ukrainian territory. Using the method of computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI) based on a random sample of cell phone numbers, 1,020 respondents aged 18 and above were surveyed. The survey could not reach respondents in the territories which were not controlled by the Ukrainian government and had no cell connection from Ukrainian cell phone providers. 

The theoretical margin of error for the sample is up to 3.1%. At the same time, additional systematic deviations of the sample can be caused by the consequences of the full-scale invasion, particularly the forced displacement of millions of citizens.

The weighting procedure was applied to the data. Thus, the weighted data correspond to the distribution of Ukraine’s population according to the State Statistics Service data (as of January 1, 2021) by age, sex, macroregion, size of settlement, and region.

Prepared as a part of the Think Tank Development Initiative in Ukraine, implemented by the International Renaissance Foundation with financial support by the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine. The opinions and positions articulated in this publication do not necessarily reflect the position of the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine or the International Renaissance Foundation.

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