Poll results for Ukrainians' support for Nato membership and non-aligned status are mixed

Do Ukrainians support joining Nato or would they rather that their country choose non-aligned status?

Some polls would seem to indicate the choice is less clear than one might assume.

According to Serhiy Kudelia, a URIS fellow at the University of Basel in Switzerland, as recently as November 21, public support for Nato membership was running at 54%, a survey conducted by IRI surveys revealed.

That, said Kudelia, might be a result of Ukraine's loss of several "staunchly" anti-Nato regions, including Crimea and Donbas, as well as the "acute" insecurity due to the continued conflict with Moscow.

Nonetheless, Kudelia, who was also an associate professor of political science at Baylor University in Texas, also posited the possibility that such surveys could be "shaped" by how questions were worded.

Hence, another poll conducted by the Social Monitoring Center showed that if offered a choice between Nato membership and non-alignment, then 45.6% of Ukrainians preferred the latter, relative to 40.8% for the former, he said.

"Given the absence of a public debate on the merits of neutrality, these results suggest that Ukraine's neutral status could still become the majority choice just as easily as NATO membership, despite the near unanimity among experts and policymakers in support of the latter."