Summary
The landscape of trust across the country heavily reflects the current political and security situation of Ukraine. According to polls of Rating Sociological Group in October 2019, 69 percent of Ukrainians trust voluntary organizations, 67 percent trust veterans of the war with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, 66 percent trust the president of Ukraine and 65 percent trust Ukraine’s armed forces.
Least of all, Ukrainians trust the prosecution authorities, courts and anti-corruption bodies, tax and customs authorities - there the level of trust does not exceed 20%.
The level of trust in the media equals 44 percent for online editions and 41 percent for television, according to the 2019 USAID-Internews Media Consumption Survey.
This suggests that Ukrainians tend to trust community leaders and word-of-mouth communication rather than state authorities and official statements. The exception in 2019 was the level of trust to the president of Ukraine, who had never been in politics before and is an example of a charismatic counter-system leader.
A major development against the backdrop of the strained Russia-Ukraine relations following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its support to secessionist forces in Eastern Ukraine consists of the promotion of Ukrainian language and culture. This provided for a significant boost of Ukrainian music and TV/radio products that not only have started to be in Ukrainian more often but also began popularising Ukrainian culture as a powerful factor of self-identification.
There are no significant division lines in means of communication between representatives of different ethnic origins. There are, however, some division lines when it comes to age groups and location. People in the capital and big cities prefer digital platforms of communication whereas deeper in regions the major channel of information feed is television. The major means of horizontal communication for such areas is word-of-mouth communication in communities. In rural areas (the population of which is gradually decreasing), the main forums of people-to-people communication are places of mass gatherings, like churches, markets, etc.