Most Ukrainians continue to trust Zelenskyy – KIIS survey
Some 61% of Ukrainians continue to trust the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 33% do not trust him, the balance of trust-distrust is +28%. This is evidenced by the results of a survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) on January 23-29, 2026.
"Currently, the majority of Ukrainians - 61% - continue to trust the president, 33% do not trust him. The balance of trust-distrust is +28%. In mid-January 2026, the indicators were almost identical. At the same time, among the 61% who trust the president, 25% "completely" trust him. The remaining 36% - "rather" trust him (and among the 33% who do not trust him, 17% do not trust him "at all", and 16% - "rather" do not trust him)," the KIIS report states on the results of the study on the website on Wednesday.
KIIS noted that an experiment was conducted during the survey. One half of the respondents were asked a direct question about how much they personally trust or distrust Zelenskyy. The other half of the respondents were asked questions using the "imagined acquaintance" method, that is, an abstract person who could freely express their opinion regardless of the circumstances, which created certain conditions of anonymity for the respondents and, accordingly, objectivity for assessing sentiment.
It turned out that in both cases the president has high trust, but still, the level of trust is lower using the "imagined acquaintance" method - 53% versus 61% if asked a direct question.
According to the survey results, half of the respondents (48%) believe that there are real experts among the current government and that they can remain in power after the war. At the same time, only slightly fewer (42%) consider the current government to be completely tainted and claim that none of its representatives should remain in power after the war. It is noted that the more respondents trust the president, the more (as expected) among them there are those who believe that there are worthy representatives among the current government who can remain in power after the war. Regarding the assessment of democracy in the country, the respondents expressed themselves as follows: 36% believe that there is as much democracy in the country as there should be in a state of war. Another 16% believe that there is even too much democracy. At the same time, a third of Ukrainians (35%) believe that there is not enough democracy now. The remaining 14% could not decide on their opinion. It is separately noted that few people spoke about the lack of elections (only 1%). Also, since the issue of mobilization is sensitive, it is noted that, in terms of the total population, there are only 6% of those who believe that there is not enough democracy in the country and at the same time explain this by the actions of the military recruitment centers.
Executive Director of KIIS Anton Hrushetsky, commenting on the study, noted that "Zelenskyy retains high public trust and, accordingly, is a legitimate head of state. In particular, few of our respondents believed that there is not enough democracy in Ukraine and at the same time spoke about the lack of elections. That is, there is currently no public demand for holding national elections as soon as possible."
He also stated that "the priority remains ending the war on terms acceptable to Ukraine, and Zelenskyy is, in the eyes of the majority of the public, the leader who should bring the country to peace. Of course, the motivation of different people may be different. For some, holding any elections is a destructive process for Ukraine, which will only undermine defense capabilities. Despite criticism of Zelenskyy, preserving institutional stability is more important, and therefore these people are ready to "tolerate" him as head of state until the end of the war."
KIIS conducted its own all-Ukrainian public opinion poll, which, among other things, included questions about trust in President Zelensky, perception of the prospects of the Ukrainian government, and the state of democracy in Ukraine. The method was telephone interviews (computer-assistedtelephoneinterviews, CATI) based on a random sample of mobile phone numbers (with random generation of phone numbers and subsequent statistical weighting) in all regions of Ukraine (territory controlled by the Government of Ukraine). The sample consisted of 1,003 respondents. The poll was conducted with adult (aged 18 and older) citizens of Ukraine who, at the time of the poll, lived in the territory of Ukraine controlled by the Government of Ukraine. The sample did not include residents of territories temporarily not controlled by the Ukrainian authorities (at the same time, some of the respondents were IDPs who moved from occupied territories), and the poll was not conducted with citizens who left abroad after February 24, 2022.
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%.
