Sergey Tigipko and Andrey Pavlovskiy

People's deputy of Ukraine Andrey Pavlovskiy, foreground, and Vice Prime Minister, Minister of Social Policy Sergey Tigipko during the parliamentary hearings "The State of Pension Reform and Its Improvement." in Kiev, on Wednesday, February 16, 2011. Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, is convinced that the authorities failed to provide an appropriate level of publicity of the pension reform. Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine made this statement before the parliamentary hearings "The State of Pension Reform and Its Improvement." The Deputy Chairman announced that according to the figures from a recent opinion poll conducted by The Ukrainian Democratic Circle agency at the request of the Institute of Politics, most Ukrainians (88%) do not support raising of the retirement age for women from 55 to 60 years, and for men (state officials) up to 62. Only 6,8% of the citizens upheld raising of the retirement age. Furthermore, one third of Ukrainians (33,3%) believe that the protests against this initiative are possible in their place of residence, thus if there are some protests against the pension reform organized, nearly 36,8 million of Ukrainian will be ready to participate. Photo by Vladimir Gontar / UNIAN