The share of Ukrainians who believe that the president can intervene in the activities of the government and the Verkhovna Rada to strengthen defense and ignore the constitutional division of powers under conditions of full-scale war decreased from 79% in July 2022 to 52% in May 2026, according to the results of a poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS).
Conversely, the share of those who believe the president must adhere to the constitutional division of powers increased from 16% to 38%.
Among those who fully trust the president, an absolute majority (81%) consider the head of state’s intervention in the activities of the government and parliament justified. Meanwhile, among those who do not trust the president at all, 16% also consider such intervention expedient, while 65% hold the opposite opinion. The remaining respondents could not answer, and their share grows as trust in the head of state declines.
Respondents were also asked whether it is necessary to reboot and replace the central authorities – the president, the government, and the Verkhovna Rada – after the war to restore the country. While in 2022, 73% expected a reboot of the central government at least at one level, the figure has now risen to 88%. In the case of the parliament, the number of those expecting a post-war reboot grew from 69% to 83%. In the case of the government, the increase went from 47% to 74%, and in the case of the president, from 23% to 67%.
Among those who fully trust the president, a minority (only 33%) expect a reboot at this level after the war; the majority, accordingly, are against it. Meanwhile, among those who rather trust him, a majority (68%) expect a reboot at this level after the war. Among those who do not trust him – both rather do not and do not at all – almost everyone expects changes.
These results correlate completely with the results of our other question in April regarding how Ukrainians see the future of incumbent President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the war. At that time, among those who fully trusted him, 70% wanted him to remain president after the war, among those who rather trusted him, only 28%, and among those who did not trust him, 1-2%.
At the same time, it is emphasized that this referred to the post-war period. Other KIIS polls consistently show that the majority of Ukrainians are against holding elections until the war is over.
The poll was conducted from May 7 to June 3, 2026, using the computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) method based on a random sample of mobile phone numbers among 1,000 respondents over the age of 18 in all government-controlled regions of Ukraine. Formally, under normal circumstances, the statistical sampling error (with a probability of 0.95 and taking into account a 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, a certain systematic deviation is added to the specified formal error, but the obtained results maintain high representativeness.
