Over 80% of Ukrainians believe Ukraine was not sufficiently prepared for Russia's invasion, survey shows
A survey has shown that 81% of Ukrainians still believe that Ukraine did not do enough to prepare for Russia's full-scale invasion.
Source: Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) survey
Details: Of those surveyed, 37% think Ukraine rather did not make sufficient efforts, although it did something, while 44% believe the efforts were absolutely insufficient.
Meanwhile, 16% believe Ukraine did nearly or completely enough to prepare: of these, 14% think it mostly did enough despite some miscalculations, and 2% believe Ukraine fully met all preparation requirements.
Respondents who said Ukraine had done rather little or not enough to prepare were asked a follow-up question on what they believed were the reasons for this.
The results show no clear consensus among the population on the causes of insufficient preparedness. The most common response was that the political leadership failed to take the necessary action (46% of those who felt Ukraine was unprepared, up from 41% in February 2025).
Additionally, many respondents said the population itself did not believe the invasion would take place or did not prepare for it (35%, up from 32% in February 2025), that Russia had too many resources (21%, previously 15%), that pro-Russian forces and agents were influential (17%, down from 21%), that the military command did not make sufficient efforts (15%, up from 13%), that Western support was insufficient (15%, previously 16%) and that it was objectively impossible to fully prepare for everything in that time (14%, up from 10%).
For reference: The KIIS Omnibus survey, which included questions commissioned by the NGO Centre for Strategic Communications Forum regarding perceptions of Ukraine's readiness for invasion, was conducted from 19 to 28 September. The survey was conducted via telephone interviews based on a random sample of mobile phone numbers across all government-controlled areas.
A total of 1,029 Ukrainian citizens aged 18 and older were surveyed. Residents of territories temporarily not under Ukrainian government control were not included in the sample (although some respondents were internally displaced persons from these areas), and the survey excluded citizens who left the country after 24 February 2022.
Formally, under normal circumstances, the statistical error of such a sample (with a probability of 0.95 and taking into account the design effect of 1.3) did not exceed 4.1% for indicators close to 50%, 3.5% for indicators close to 25%, 2.5% for indicators close to 10% and 1.8% for indicators close to 5%.
Under conditions of war, in addition to the specified formal error, a certain systematic deviation is added. Factors that may affect the quality of results in "wartime" conditions were previously cited by KIIS.
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