Source:  Viktor Yelens'kii, Oleksandr Stegnii, Andrii Yurash, and Il'ko Kucheriv, "Kruglii stil' Religiinii vibir naselennia Ukraini: za danimi opituvannia gromads'koi dumki' [Round Table Discussion 'Religious Choices of Ukraine's Population: According to the Data from Public Opinions Polls']."  Kyiv: Fond "Demokratichni initsiativi," Mott Foundation, 2000.

* Numbers in italics reflect more recent updating in Andrew Yurash, "Inter-Confessional Relations in Ukraine--Permanent or Usual Interaction? Laconic Portraits of the Main Participants of Inter-Religious Opposition," unpublished paper, September 2001.

Commentary
Research on the denominational configuration of Ukraine today varies so much that it raises questions about validity. However, the problem is not researchers' lack of professionalism, but the lack of firm denominational identity among respondents. Actually, this is not a problem for the Eastern Rite Catholic Church because it consistently accounts for six to eight percent of the adult population of Ukraine in surveys. It is more complicated with Protestants because some surveys do not "catch" them at all. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses,** some Pentecostals, and even some Baptists do not respond to the name Protestant. Yet, Protestant denominations that have a fixed membership are easy to count. The All-Ukrainian Union of Evangelical Christian-Baptist Church has 130,000 members, the All-Ukrainian Union of Evangelical Christians (Pentecostal) has about 90,000 members, the Ukrainian Union of Seventh-day Adventists has about 40,000 members, and Jehovah's Witnesses** have about 107,000 members. The above Protestants, plus members of charismatic and independent churches (excluding Reformed and Lutherans), cannot be more than 600,000 to 700,000. Without question, their influence on religious life is much higher than their numbers would suggest. But the figures shown also undermine the idea of "Protestant expansion" in Ukraine.

** Editor's Note: The East-West Church & Ministry Report does not consider Jehovah's Witnesses, who are non-trinitarian, to be members of a Christian denomination.

How Religious is Ukraine? Results of Survey Research

1. Your attitude to religion. You are . . .

Sixty-six percent of the people questioned consider themselves to be believers, almost a fourth are nonbelievers, and five percent say that they are atheists. This rather high level of declared believers does not correspond with actual participation in religious life.

2. How often are you coming to church services?

Calculating the results, we can assume that the number of believers who actually hold to church canons and live correspondingly is not higher than 15-20 percent of Ukraine's adult population today.

3. What is your denomination?

There is a paradoxical situation in that the number of registered churches of the Moscow Patriarchate is much larger than the number of churches of the Kyiv Patriarchate, yet only 12 percent of the people identify themselves with the Moscow Patriarchate, whereas 22 percent identify with the Kyiv Patriarchate.

Source: Ibid