Vitaly Saenko13:22, 21.02.25

74% of Ukrainians surveyed said that Zelensky is a patriot of Ukraine, and 73% believe that he is an intelligent and knowledgeable person.

The majority of Ukrainian citizens surveyed (63%) approve of the activities of the current President Volodymyr Zelensky .

This is evidenced by the results of a study by the Onukh IBIF project team (funded by the British Academy), conducted in November-December 2024 and January 2025, which was published on the website of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.

In particular, Ukrainians were asked whether they approve or disapprove of Volodymyr Zelensky’s performance as president. The survey results showed that his support has increased slightly compared to the previous poll.

It is noted that 63% of Ukrainians answered that they completely, completely or rather approve of his activities as president. Of these, 36.9% answered that they rather approve, and 26.1% – completely approve.

At the same time, 14.4% of respondents answered that they do not approve at all, and 18.3% rather disapprove.

As sociologists have noted, the “approval” indicator is close to the “trust” indicator, but they are not completely identical (for example, you can approve of a person’s activity, but not trust him).

Also, these indicators (both approval and trust) differ from the electoral rating, when a person must choose from a list who to vote for. In the case of voting, people apply different evaluation criteria and this reflects a different attitude.

“Right now, many are manipulating data and presenting approval/trust levels as electoral ratings, which is incorrect. Therefore, we ask you to be careful,” the researchers noted.

At the same time, Ukrainians were also asked about the qualities that President Zelensky possesses.

Thus, a significant majority of respondents agreed that Zelensky embodies positive traits: 74% said he is a patriot of Ukraine, 73% believe he is an intelligent and knowledgeable person, 60% consider him honest and trustworthy, and 65% consider him a strong leader. Assessments that many Western leaders would envy.

Moreover, according to sociologists, although Zelensky remains the most popular politician (even if his popularity has declined from the record levels of 2022 and 2023), this does not mean that Ukrainians do not want him to cooperate more with the opposition, and vice versa.

Thus, 70% of all Ukrainians agree or strongly agree that “the president should include more opposition politicians in his cabinet.” But even more Ukrainians believe that the opposition should do more to demonstrate a united front in Ukraine.

82% of all Ukrainians tend to somewhat or strongly agree that “opposition figures should find a way to work with the president.” So while most Ukrainians approve of the president, they want to see more cooperation and firmly place responsibility on the opposition to do more to achieve this goal.

At the same time, researchers note that Zelensky remains the most popular politician – even more popular are generals who are not politicians and are not running now.

Thus, among political leaders, Zelensky leads in polls regarding the upcoming elections: approximately 26%-32% of the Ukrainian population reports that they would vote for him in the first round, which is significantly ahead of the next politician and former president Petro Poroshenko, who receives 5-6% (of the entire Ukrainian population that reports).

Also, if we look only at decisive and likely voters, Zelensky gets 32-41%, and the next political candidates, Dmytro Razumkov and Petro Poroshenko, are still lagging behind in single digits.

“While this could of course change – not least if a new candidate enters the race when it is announced – this result suggests that it is very likely that Zelensky will almost certainly be among the last two candidates in the second round. Moreover, as things stand, he would be the favourite among politicians,” the sociologists note.

Researchers point out that a potential contender in the second round could be popular military general Valeriy Zaluzhny, a former commander-in-chief and now Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, but he has not publicly expressed any political ambitions.

(C)UNIAN 2025