The press release was prepared by Anton Hrushetskyi, executive director of KIIS

During February 4-9, 2025, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) conducted its own all-Ukrainian public opinion survey "Omnibus", to which, on its own initiative, added a question about trust in President V. Zelenskyi. By the method of 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 (the territory controlled by the Government of Ukraine), 1,000 respondents were interviewed. The survey was conducted with adult (aged 18 and older) citizens of Ukraine who, at the time of the survey, 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 are IDPs who moved from the occupied territories), and the survey 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% for indicators close to 50%, 3.5% for indicators close to 25%, 2.5% for indicators close to 10%, 1.8% for indicators close to 5%.

Under the conditions of war, in addition to the specified formal error, a certain systematic deviation is added. Factors that may affect the quality of results in "wartime" conditions were previously cited by KIIS.

In general, we believe that the obtained results are still highly representative and allow a fairly reliable analysis of the public moods of the population.

Ukraine faces serious challenges, in particular due to the international situation and relations with allied partners. Part of the discussion concerns the discussion of the “legitimacy” of the President of Ukraine and in the media you can see information that this could be one of the components of possible “peace plans” (for example, holding elections and then determining the parameters of the agreements). Although at the same time, the majority in Ukrainian society continues to adhere to the opinion that elections should be held after the war and the priority is to strengthen the defense capability.

At the same time, an important dimension of the attitude towards the President is the level of trust. Below we suggest you familiarize yourself with the results of a recent survey on trust in President V. Zelenskyi and hope that this information will be properly used when the issues of "legitimacy" and "elections" are discussed.

As of the first half of February 2025, 57% of Ukrainians trust President V. Zelenskyi, 37% do not trust him. The balance of trust-distrust is +20%.

Moreover, the trust indicators have improved slightly compared to the last survey in December 2024, when 52% trusted him, 39% did not trust him, and the balance of trust-distrust was +13%.

Graph 1. Dynamics of trust in President V. Zelenskyi during 2019-2025

"To what extent do you trust or distrust Volodymyr Zelenskyi?"

In all regions of Ukraine[1] the situation is quite similar and the balance of trust-distrust is positive.

Graph2. Trust in President V. Zelenskyi in the regional dimension

A. Hrushetskyi, comments on the survey results:

President V. Zelenskyi retains a fairly high level of trust in society (in fact, for a democratic society to have a current trust indicator is a very good result!) and even more so retains legitimacy.

If some international partners and allies are worried about the legitimacy of the President in the context of possible peace negotiations and consider it appropriate to insist on elections, then from the point of view of Ukrainian citizens themselves, there are no problems with this, the current President and the authorities are quite legitimate to conduct complex negotiations, and elections should be held after the war ends and at least Ukraine receives reliable security guarantees.

Annex 1. Formulation of questions from the questionnaire

How much do you trust or distrust Volodymyr Zelenskyi?