Public Interest Journalism Lab presented a sociological study on democracy during wartime.

“The topic we dug into this time calls for a long conversation to understand what people think about the challenges facing democracy in Ukraine during the war,” admits Denys Kobzin, Director of the Kharkiv Institute for Social Research, during the presentation of our new major study on democracy in wartime.

On the 7th of April in Kyiv, we brought together media professionals, analysts, and sociologists to present the results of our joint work with the Kharkiv Institute for Social Research. We found that, for people, freedom of speech is one of the critically important freedoms under the restrictions of martial law. Freedom of movement and freedom of speech are the two markers through which people probably feel the sharpest changes in society.

Qualitative research does not aim to indicate the popularity of particular views, which is extremely difficult in wartime. Its purpose is to understand the motivations and reasoning of specific groups within the population. Through focus groups and in-depth interviews, we spoke with Ukrainians living in settlements close to the front line as well as farther away from it, refugees abroad, active service members, employees of Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Centres, veterans, and men who are not serving. In the fifth year of the war, we found that Ukrainians’ attitudes toward democracy and freedom are shaped above all by the differences in their lived experiences.

“What is interesting is that we conducted this study not at the start of the full-scale invasion, but already at the stage of a protracted war. That is precisely why it allowed us to see the shifts in how people consume information, how much they trust the media, and how they perceive various restrictions,” emphasized Angelina Kariakina, co-founder of the Public Interest Journalism Lab.

After the presentation, participants discussed several particularly sensitive issues raised by the study: how Ukrainians perceive people who remain in occupied territories, whether there is a demand not simply to return to the pre-war status quo but for a new model of democracy, and how society responds to restrictions during wartime. A separate discussion focused on trust in the media, the demand for an honest conversation about losses, mistakes, and responsibility, as well as how to speak with people who do not feel they have a role in the common cause.

Read the study Ukraine’s Dual Struggle on our website. The text is available in both Ukrainian and English. The study includes many quotations from respondents, as well as recommendations addressed to Ukrainian politicians, state institutions, media representatives, and international partners.