Only 42% of Ukrainians in favor of schools teaching Russian, survey shows
Children hold a Ukrainian flag against the backdrop of broken Russian military equipment brought from Ukraine to Prague, July 11, 2022 (Photo:REUTERS/David W Cerny)
52% of Ukrainians don’t think it’s necessary to learn the Russian language in schools, while 42% support preserving its study in some capacity, according to a survey by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KMIS), the results of which were published on March 9.
KMIS notes it conducts these polls regularly. In 2019, only 8% of Ukrainians believed that the Russian language was unnecessary to study.
In 1998, 46% of people believed that the Russian language should be studied to the same extent as Ukrainian; by 2019 this number went down to 30%, and currently sits at just 3%. In 1998, 32% of survey participants believed that Russian should be studied to a lesser extent than Ukrainian language, but more than other foreign languages. As of now, this number has decreased to 6%.
According to the poll, of the 42% respondents who support keeping the study of the Russian language, a vast majority – 33% (or almost 80% of this category) – want Russian lessons to take up no more of school curriculum than other foreign languages.
The survey was conducted on February 14-22, with 1074 respondents and a 3.4% margin of error.
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