Support in Ukraine for President Volodymyr Zelensky was lower at the end of 2023 than a year earlier amid the ongoing war with Russia, according to a poll.
The Kyiv International Institute for Sociology (KMIS) survey found that Ukrainian society still backs the country’s leadership and military, but support for Zelensky fell from 84 percent at the end of 2022 to 62 percent at the end of last year.
The poll of 1,031 adults across the country, except for Crimea and other Russian-occupied territory, took place between November 29 and December 9, and had a margin of error of 3.4 percent. It also found 18 percent of Ukrainians didn’t trust Zelensky, compared with only 5 percent who distrusted him in 2022.
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Meanwhile, 96 percent of respondents supported the Ukrainian armed forces and 88 percent trusted Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, whose comments to The Economist in November that the war had reached a “stalemate” were rejected by Zelensky amid reports of tensions between the pair.
The KMIS said, according to a translation from Ukrainian, that “although there is also a downward trend in the case of the president, he retains the overwhelming trust of the Ukrainian public.”
However, the share of those who trusted the parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, decreased from 35 percent to 15 percent in the same time frame, with those not trusting it increasing from 34 percent to 61 percent.
Overall trust in the Ukrainian government decreased from 52 percent to 26 percent, while mistrust increased from 19 percent to 44 percent, with the KMIS concluding that “compared with December 2022, criticism of the authorities is growing.”
The KMIS said that this was most likely due to “unrealized expectations for this year” as well as “claims about the efficiency and transparency of activities.”
However, the institute said: “It is important that, at the same time, criticism does not turn into demands for elections,” which while due in 2024, have been ruled out by Zelensky because of the war.
A discussion about Ukrainian elections has been pushed by some U.S. politicians, such as Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. Ukrainian legislation bans elections during martial law imposed after Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion and the law would need to be changed for a ballot to take place
But Ukrainian historian Serhii Plokhy told Newsweek in October that there is a “strong sense” in Ukrainian society the election that some want in Ukraine to justify its democratic credentials “is actually not a good idea.”
“In conditions in which the government controls the media to a degree that it never controlled before, the elections from that point of view, would not be free and fair,” Plokhy said. “War limits your freedoms so that includes when it comes to free elections,” he added.
KMIS said that Zelensky “maintains high legitimacy, which is definitely needed to maintain the control of state institutions in this difficult period and to conduct difficult negotiations with Western partners.”
In its assessment of the Kyiv institute’s findings, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said that Ukrainians were probably more optimistic in December 2022 than a year later because of the liberation of occupied territory in Kharkiv and Kherson oblasts during successful counteroffensive operations.
The findings showed how Ukraine was “experiencing tensions typical in a society fighting an existential defensive war,” the Washington, D.C., think tank said on Tuesday. Newsweek contacted the Ukrainian presidential office for comment.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.