News and Press releases

• These political forces have the best chances to gain the largest number of seats in the new regional council. The Lytvyn Bloc, People’s Self-Defense, and the “United Center” party also have strong chances to enter the regional council.
  At the local level, BYuT’s support is lower than its support at the national level.
• In Ternopil Oblast, more people are dissatisfied than satisfied with the performance of the local authorities.
• Despite the fact that more than half of local residents (54%) believe the region currently needs radical changes (while 40% favor stability), only 40% supported the decision to hold early elections to the Ternopil Regional Council.
• This relatively low level of support can be explained by the negative attitude toward the phenomenon of “repeat elections”, which formed after the announcement of early parliamentary elections in Ukraine in October of the previous year and was accompanied by strong criticism from certain political forces.
• Nevertheless, a high voter turnout is expected in the early elections to the Ternopil Regional Council.
  40% said they would definitely vote on March 15, 2009, 35% said they would probably vote, 20% said they would definitely or most likely not vote, and 5% were undecided.

This view is held primarily by supporters of BYuT and “Our Ukraine.” At the same time, for the former this is seen rather as a negative, while for the latter it is viewed as a positive (a merit). Supporters of other political forces, instead, name among the main reasons for the failure to form a majority of the Party of Regions and BYuT Yuliya Tymoshenko’s own refusal, due to the risk of losing her voters. The factor of opposition to such a союз from Volodymyr Lytvyn is practically not taken seriously by anyone.

This view is shared by 75% of respondents who do not believe in the effectiveness of the coalition composed of BYuT, “Our Ukraine – People’s Self-Defense,” and the Lytvyn Bloc. More than half of supporters of BYuT, “Our Ukraine,” and “Svoboda” think that next year there will be early elections to the Verkhovna Rada. Only supporters of the Lytvyn Bloc are skeptical about this scenario (only one quarter believe in early elections).

• The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has approved granting a loan to the city of Lviv for the development of the city’s transport infrastructure. The loan amounts to 50 million euros. The credit committee made this decision at one of its recent meetings. The 50-million-euro loan is only the first tranche from the bank, and in total the EBRD has declared its readiness to open a credit line for Lviv of 100 million euros, the Department of External Relations of the Lviv City Council reported.
• It is planned that the money will first of all be directed to the construction of a transport interchange on one of the ring roads near the future new stadium, which will be built for the UEFA Euro-2012 Football Championship. However, city deputies still have to discuss the terms of the loan and approve the agreement itself. The arrival of the bank’s consultants is scheduled for January 19. The agreement will be signed directly after the discussion of the terms, methods, and features of financing. Therefore, money for solving one of the city’s priority problems in preparing for Euro-2012 — the reconstruction of roads — is expected to start coming in the first half of next year, according to the city administration.
• However, as recent sociological surveys show, the residents of Lviv themselves are losing interest in Euro-2012. Problems of preparation are of interest to only 30 percent of those surveyed, whereas quite recently this figure was 15 percent higher, Oleksii Antypovych told Deutsche Welle in an interview.
• “This means that people have lowered their expectations regarding the championship being held in Lviv. If this trend continues, and the number of those who are not concerned about this issue becomes equal to the number of those who are interested in the preparations, then the hosting of the championship could be given to another city and there would be no significant objections in Lviv,” Antypovych noted.
• The public believes that it cannot influence the preparation for the championship, the sociologist states. And if Lviv is indeed deprived of the right to host matches, 34 percent of Lviv residents believe that the mayor of the city personally should bear responsibility for this.

• Less than 1% of Lviv residents stated that they are not concerned about the consequences of the financial and economic crisis.
• The number of those who negatively assessed the government’s anti-crisis work (45%) is practically equal to the number of respondents who assessed it positively (42%). At the same time, only 9% of respondents described the work of the Tymoshenko Cabinet of Ministers as entirely positive. Even among supporters of BYuT, the share of those dissatisfied with the government’s work is almost 30% (among supporters of “Our Ukraine” it is 55%).
• Those who assessed the Tymoshenko government’s work in overcoming the crisis negatively were predominantly citizens who today are not inclined to trust either V. Yushchenko or Y. Tymoshenko.

• The election of V. Lytvyn as Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada is supported by almost 60% of Batkivshchyna supporters, 55% of Svoboda, and 50% of Our Ukraine supporters. At the same time, Lviv residents mostly do not believe that the new coalition consisting of Batkivshchyna, Our Ukraine–People’s Self-Defense, and the Lytvyn Bloc will be able to work actively in the Verkhovna Rada. Only 50% of Batkivshchyna supporters and almost 40% of Svoboda and Our Ukraine supporters believe in the effectiveness of this coalition.
• According to respondents, the greatest resistance to the coalition’s activity will come from V. Yanukovych (28%), V. Yushchenko (14%), V. Baloha (8%), A. Yatseniuk (5%), and V. Medvedchuk (3%).

Halyna Stadnyk, "Deutsche Welle"

• Last weekend marked the fourth anniversary of the “Orange Revolution,” but in Lviv there were no events, no commemorations, and no celebrations. This is an atypical situation for Western Ukraine.
• If last year certain parties still commemorated the events of the “Orange Revolution,” this year in **Lviv everyone was absorbed in memorial events connected with the Holodomor anniversary. Politicians themselves say that “the revolution should remain in people’s lives, and holding any celebrations would be inappropriate.”
• Commemorating the anniversary is not only inappropriate, but also not beneficial for any political force, noted sociologist Oleksii Antypovych in an interview with “Deutsche Welle.”
• Disappointment with the Orange leaders among the public is so great that it could provoke a negative reaction, and politicians themselves understand this, says Antypovych:
  “The main remark is that we were used during the Orange events, and now anyone who wants to repeat or recall those events will look like they are using people again, and people would react negatively to that.”

Oleksii Antypovych, Rating Group

• It cannot be said that these processes were unpredictable for experts, but few expected such a rapid negative dynamic for the two main political favorites in Western Ukraine.
• Since March of this year, V. Yushchenko has lost almost half of his trust rating (in the West: 34% trust him, 56% do not), while Y. Tymoshenko has lost one and a half times (60% trust her, 31% do not).
• This is happening despite the fact that last year there had been a clear improvement (especially after the decision to dissolve parliament and the formation of a democratic coalition following the early elections).
• The key trigger for disappointment was the latest political crisis, or more precisely the policy of constant confrontation between the two main politicians. Ratings began to collapse already in May, when the Prime Minister started attacking the Head of State in response to attacks against her.
• For example, in March 2008, 85% of residents of Lviv region trusted Y. Tymoshenko and 77% trusted V. Yushchenko, but by October 2008 only 53% and 39% did so respectively.
• The events in the Verkhovna Rada in September were described by citizens exclusively as an escalation of the struggle for power. In connection with the situation in parliament, attitudes worsened among more than half of respondents toward V. Yushchenko (57%) and among more than one third toward Y. Tymoshenko (37%). Only very few saw improvement: 3% and 13% respectively.
• The October survey of residents of five Western Ukrainian regions only confirmed clear trends: half consider the joint parliamentary voting of BYuT and the Party of Regions to be a betrayal, and at the same time half consider the withdrawal of “Our Ukraine” from the coalition to be a betrayal.
• This confirms the thesis that for voters in Western Ukraine ideological betrayal was just as painful as the mutual betrayal of partners within the democratic coalition.
• The main culprit of the split in the team and of the country’s crisis is considered to be V. Yushchenko.
• Voters distributed responsibility for the political crisis almost evenly between V. Baloha (17%), Y. Tymoshenko (13%), and V. Yanukovych (11%), while the clear “leader” here is the President of Ukraine with 36%.
• It is characteristic that compared to a similar study conducted in July of this year, the share of respondents who believe that V. Yanukovych is responsible for the political crisis has almost halved.
• Regarding regional specifics, V. Yushchenko is blamed the most in Volyn and Rivne regions, V. Baloha in Ternopil region, Y. Tymoshenko in Ivano-Frankivsk region, and V. Yanukovych in Lviv region.
• Of course, there are other reasons for the decline in V. Yushchenko’s rating. For example, in the West one of the key issues is traditionally the fight against corruption. But respondents evaluate the President’s actions in this area either as ineffective or say that such actions do not exist at all.
• So what way out do Western Ukrainian voters see? Despite the fact that over 44% expect radical change, only one quarter support early elections. People genuinely do not understand why these elections are needed if the same politicians will come to power and nothing will change. At the same time, residents no longer believe in an effective alliance between Prime Minister Tymoshenko and President Yushchenko, and they simply do not accept V. Yanukovych as an alternative.
• In reality, whether through radical change or through stable development, citizens want change — but they associate these changes primarily with the arrival of new politicians. They are searching for an alternative, for politicians they can believe in.
• It is therefore not surprising that A. Yatseniuk is now second in the trust ranking after Y. Tymoshenko, with the same level of distrust as the Prime Minister (31%).
• In the presidential race A. Yatseniuk with 13% is also second in Western Ukraine: he loses almost threefold to Y. Tymoshenko (36%), but already beats the incumbent President (11%).
• If A. Yatseniuk were to head a new political force, he would have a chance to take second place after BYuT in early elections. A politician who is openly not a national-patriot becoming second in Western Ukraine is natural, because people are tired of confrontation.
• Another predictable surprise is VO “Svoboda” — a kind of refuge for disillusioned national-patriots from both BYuT and Our Ukraine. In Lviv, for example, Tyahnybok’s party has held second place since June 2008, ahead of Our Ukraine. If elections to the Lviv City Council were held, “Svoboda” would already be competing for first (!) place.
• It so happened that “Svoboda” did not even have to do anything. On the one hand, BYuT constantly criticized the President and Our Ukraine for possible cooperation with the Party of Regions, thus pushing away national-patriots. On the other hand, BYuT itself went into cooperation with the “regionalists.” If BYuT had formalized its alliance with V. Yanukovych, the ratings of BYuT and Y. Tymoshenko would have fallen by at least half. Under such conditions, “Svoboda”, without any parliamentary experience, would have entered the Verkhovna Rada with 100% certainty.
• These are the paradoxes of constant political confrontation.

• For the first time during A. Sadovyi’s tenure as mayor, more than half of city residents say they do not trust him (in October 2006 this figure was only slightly over one quarter).
• The biggest erosion of trust in the incumbent mayor occurred in late 2006 and in spring 2008.

More than half of residents of Lviv Oblast reported a worsening of their attitude toward Yushchenko, and almost 40% toward Tymoshenko.

Oleksii Antypovych, Rating Group

• At the end of September, a draft law titled “On the Functioning of Subjects of Sociological Activity” was registered in the Verkhovna Rada by MP V. Chudnovskyi from the Yuliia Tymoshenko Bloc. At a minimum, the bill bans the establishment of sociological companies with foreign capital, restricts the right of the media to publish opinion poll data, provides for the creation of a licensing commission under the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Education, and the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and introduces questionable grounds for revoking the licenses of sociological service providers, among other provisions.
• Assessing the constitutionality of this draft law is the responsibility of the Constitutional Court; assessing the losses for the Ukrainian sociological market due to the exclusion of leading foreign survey technologies and capital is the task of marketers and economists. The duty of sociologists and civil society organizations is to explain to the public what the adoption of such a law would mean for the development of sociology and for freedom of speech in general.
• The author of the bill explains its introduction by arguing that, “for an adequate response by the state to societal demands,” it must “accurately know the moods, priorities, and needs of citizens.” At the same time, it is stated that “sociologists often cannot offer politicians, administrators, and socio-economic managers reliable mechanisms and tested methodologies for the optimal use of public opinion in order to increase the effectiveness of governance.”
• Unfortunately, incompetent managers often blame sociologists for their own failures, even though it is usually managers who misinterpret sociological survey results. Those in power act more wisely when they merely formulate the task for sociological centers, which then use tested methods of analysis and problem-solving and deliver the results “turnkey.”
• Nevertheless, nothing prevents authorities from trusting certain sociological firms (that is, “their own”) while distrusting others (“outsiders”) when making decisions. Power does not want to hear opinions that differ from its own, nor does it want citizens to hear alternative views. Yet it is sociologists, not politicians, whom Chudnovskyi accuses of manipulating public opinion.
• The adoption of this bill therefore creates a threat that authorities will close down undesirable sociological companies, provoke an increase in raider attacks initiated by officials, and drive about two-thirds of the sociological services market into the shadows. Moreover, some sociological actors would be forced to publish distorted survey results merely to bring them into line with the position of those in power. After the adoption of this legal “innovation,” a whole caste of people would emerge, empowered to decide whether survey data are falsified or not, and to pressure the Ministry of Justice to revoke the licenses of unwanted sociological organizations. Most experts interpret these provisions to mean that a single standard of accuracy will be imposed by sociological companies close to the authorities. It is still unclear how the “published margin of error of a sociological forecast” mentioned in the bill would be calculated — by median, by mode across different surveys, or otherwise — but that is not the key issue. What matters is that it would be calculated around the data of “court sociologists.”
• This could mean that whenever a particular political force comes to power, for years we would observe a “consistently high level of its support,” fluctuating only within plus or minus three percent.
• Chudnovskyi explains the ban on establishing sociological companies with mixed Ukrainian-foreign capital (until now independent of the authorities) as follows: “the collection of information about the political and socio-economic life of Ukraine by sociological services can be used (and in fact is used) by foreign intelligence services to create obstacles to the implementation of Ukraine’s national interests, as well as for economic and ideological subversion against our country.”
• But what prevents non-residents from ordering research and receiving results from Ukrainian sociological companies in circumvention of the law? Does this not mean that sociological entities conducting surveys under foreign grants will be subjected to strict surveillance? Will sociological centers now be required to provide confidential information about their clients and research topics to law-enforcement or statistical authorities?
• Terms such as “foreign intelligence services” and “ideological subversion” may sound convincing only to members of parliament when spoken by their colleagues. Experienced sociologists can confidently state that most Ukrainians perceive such notions as belonging to cinema rather than to the work of sociological centers. People are far more inclined to believe that public opinion is manipulated through hourly news broadcasts or television advertising. One can therefore predict that media outlets will become the next targets of inspections and licensing after sociologists.
• One thing is clear: the draft law on subjects of sociological activity is a prelude to a new wave of “temnyky” — informal instructions — for the media and sociological centers. In essence, it is the first test balloon thrown into society to see whether it is ready for the popular slogan of “restoring order,” or whether it is better to postpone such bills for “better times.”
• In my view, journalists, civil society, and my colleagues have no choice but once again to stand up for freedom of speech. Otherwise, the authorities will once again forget what it is and under what conditions citizens have defended it.

No more than 7% of respondents believe that relations between Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, Tymoshenko and Yanukovych, or Yanukovych and Yushchenko are friendly. Hostility between these politicians was reported by respondents in all six regions, most strongly in Donbas and least in the North. At the same time, the majority of respondents, ranging from 54% to 69%, are convinced that relations between any of these three politicians will not improve over the next year.

• 42% of respondents (even when offered different combinations) expect solutions to their personal problems from the three most popular politicians of recent years — Viktor Yushchenko, Yuliya Tymoshenko, and Viktor Yanukovych.
  At the same time, 46% expect solutions from new politicians.
• The demand for new political figures is especially strong in the South, East, and Donbas (around 60%), and weakest in the West, where only about one third of respondents express such expectations.

About half of respondents consider both the joint voting of BYuT with the Party of Regions (48%) and the withdrawal of the NU-NS Bloc from the parliamentary coalition (52%) to be a betrayal of voters. In connection with the situation in the Verkhovna Rada, attitudes toward Viktor Yushchenko worsened among more than half of respondents, and toward Yulia Tymoshenko among about 40% of those surveyed.

• One and a half times fewer respondents believe that this coalition represents the interests of Ukraine.
• The key consequences for Ukraine from the formation of a majority by BYuT and PR were named as the impeachment of the President (32%) and increased dependence on Russia (28%).

• More than two thirds of surveyed residents of Western Ukraine (69%) are to some extent ready to take part in elections to the Verkhovna Rada if they were held in the near future.
• BYuT would be supported by 44% of those who intend to take part in voting. NSNU and People’s Self-Defense would receive 21% (17% + 4%), VO “Svoboda” 6%, and the Party of Regions 6%.

Accordingly, more than three quarters of respondents support the withdrawal of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet from the territory of Ukraine by 2017. Of these, 32% support doing so in the near future. Only 10% of respondents favor extending the presence of the Russian fleet in Sevastopol.

• At the same time, a relative majority (41%) consider V. Yushchenko and Yu. Tymoshenko equally responsible for the collapse of the democratic coalition.
• 17% of respondents name the formation of a BYuT–Party of Regions majority as the best way out of the situation.

16% of respondents are confident that she did this because of personal hostility toward Viktor Yushchenko, while 8% believe it was due to pressure from Russia. At the same time, 18% are convinced that Yulia Tymoshenko was trying to restore order in the country, and 9% believe she was trying to unite the country.

• Only 6% are dissatisfied with the Ukrainian Olympic team’s achievement of 11th place.
• Most respondents do not associate Ukraine’s success at the Olympics with state support for sport, considering that support to be low.