Despite mantras about the country's unity, the rift between West and East is deepening in Ukraine
In Ukraine, there is a growing split between regions, which trust the central government and security forces less and less.
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This was stated at a press conference in Kyiv by Oleksiy Melnyk, co-director of the Razumkov Center's foreign policy and international security programs, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
According to him, the central Kyiv authorities and Ukrainian security forces are trusted most in the western regions. The least support is among the population of the southeast of the country.
“The entire Ukrainian government, to one degree or another, today has an extremely low degree of citizens’ trust. But there are also significant regional differences. If we take the president, then the balance of trust in Ukraine as a whole is negative, more than 50%. In eastern Ukraine, this balance of mistrust is 20% greater. That is, if in Ukraine as a whole the President of Ukraine is not trusted, then in the east they do not trust him even more.
Even more alarming are the regional differences in trust/distrust in our security forces... If in Ukraine as a whole there is about 20%, +20% balance of trust in the armed forces, then in the east there is minus 10%, a negative balance of trust. The same applies to the National Guard,” Melnyk said.
Despite mantras about national unity, the rift between West and East is deepening in Ukraine.