Over 70% of Ukrainians would support Ukraine joining NATO on West German model

As of November 2024, about 70% of Ukrainians were positive about the idea of Ukraine's gradual accession to NATO, just as it was for divided Germany. 

According to a poll conducted by the New Europe Center, 70.3% of respondents said they supported the idea of Ukraine's gradual accession to NATO – that the Alliance would invite Ukraine to join within its international borders, but that the guarantees of Article 5 would not initially apply to the territories occupied by Russia.

This idea is called the West German model: the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) became a NATO member in 1955, but the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), behind the so-called Iron Curtain, joined almost 40 years later, after the country's reunification.  

The New Europe Center noted that a significant difference from Germany's case in the idea of gradual accession for Ukraine is that the invitation should immediately cover the entire territory of the country within internationally recognised borders. 

Unofficially, it was reported that this idea has been discussed for a long time in the West in discussions about possible formats for ending the current phase of the war and preventing renewed Russian aggression. 

Info Sapiens conducted the survey on behalf of the New Europe Center between 15 November and 27 November 2024.

The survey's sample size is 1,000 respondents, and the theoretical sampling error does not exceed 3.1% with a probability of 0.95%.