Trust in Zelenskyy drops to 58% - KIIS
The absolute majority (58%) of Ukrainians currently trust the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyyy, while 35% do not, according to the results of a sociological survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) from July 23 to August 4.
It is noted that in early June, 65% trusted Zelenskyy, while 30% did not, which indicates a decrease in the Trust-Distrust Balance from +35% to +23% in two months. At the same time, the current trust indicators are higher than the minimum during the full-scale war, which were in December 2024.
"When analyzing the trend of trust in the context of events surrounding Law No. 12414, it should be taken into account that we already observed a downward trend in early June, so perhaps by July 22, 2025, trust was already below 65%. That is, not all of the decline in trust (7 percentage points) can be attributed to the adoption of Law No. 12414. However, this event undoubtedly had an impact, since some respondents indicated this vote as the reason for distrust in the President," the press release on the study results says.
KIIS notes that trust has indeed decreased the most among young people under 30 - if at the beginning of the summer 74% trusted the president, then now - 59%. The decline in trust is also observed among other age categories, but to a lesser extent.
"President Zelenskyy, despite the rather large-scale protests and the stormy reaction in the media, retains a fairly high level of trust (and legitimacy) among the Ukrainian public. Perhaps this was facilitated by the rapid response to the protests and the prompt submission of the new law to the parliament. However, a steady downward trend is an alarming signal that requires attention and considered decisions from the authorities," Anton Hrushetsky, executive director of KIIS, said.
The survey was conducted using the telephone interview method (CATI) based on a random sample of mobile phone numbers in all government-controlled regions of Ukraine among 1,022 adult respondents. Formally, under normal circumstances, the statistical error of such a sample with a probability of 0.95 and taking into account the design effect of 1.3 did not exceed 4.1% for indicators close to 50% and 1.8% for indicators close to 5%. Under war conditions, in addition to the aforementioned formal error, a certain systematic deviation is added.
