Volodymyr Zelensky won his elections with 73% of support over former president Petro Poroshenko. That is to say, his was a resounding victory that no one discussed in Ukraine. The first moments of his presidency were erratic, but the Russian invasion completely changed the profile of this former comedian, also a regular on Russian television during his acting days, to turn him into a bold character who embodied resistance against the ruthless aggression of a nuclear power. The actor left the suit and tie in the wardrobe to wear military green. From February 2022 to today, its defiant image has not dissolved, although it has been worn away.
The trust of Ukrainians in Zelensky today is going through one of its lowest moments since the start of the large-scale invasion. According to the latest survey by the kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), conducted between August 21 and September 10, 54% of citizens trust the president and 41% do not.
They are just two points above the minimum of the war, the 52% registered in December 2024, and very far from the 90% it reached in the spring of 2022, when it decided to stay in kyiv while the Russian tanks advanced towards the capital. His popularity has been a roller coaster: it fell throughout 2024 due to war fatigue and setbacks on the front, rebounded to 74% in May 2025 after his clash with Trump in the White House and then fell again due to two thorny issues: cases of corruption in his closest circle and the dismissal last summer of his charismatic Minister of Defense, Mijailo Fedorov, considered by many as the great technological wizard of drone warfare.
Intransigence with rivals
If there is anything that is blamed on Zelensky in Ukraine, it is his intransigence with political rivals. General Valery Zaluzhny, head of the Army in the early stages of the invasion, was packaged as an ambassador of the United Kingdom to get him out of the way. He doesn't even speak to the mayor of kyiv, former boxer Vitali Klichkó. He has sanctioned Petro Poroshenko, while he fired Fedorov when he realized that he could be a political rival in the future. Despite this, Zelensky is not a "dictator without elections", as Donald Trump called him last year, since the martial law that now governs Ukraine prevents the holding of elections in time of war.
That is something that the vast majority of Ukrainians understand: it is impossible to vote under Russian bombs and with millions of citizens refugees in Europe or displaced within the national territory. Therefore, the blonde tycoon's words last Sunday ensuring that Zelensky must be replaced all they really achieve is that the Ukrainian gains support in his own territory. If there is one thing Ukrainians hate, it is that someone dictates who should govern them, whether they live in Moscow or Washington.
For Olga Tarnovska, translator, "no one here is going to support Trump and his idea of changing Zelensky. We may like Zelensky or not, but he is our president in the middle of a war and we are going to support him. There are politicians who can try to play on people's fatigue to reject Zelensky and call for elections, but that is not going to work with Putin."
The Trump-Zelensky relationship
Donald Trump has never been neutral in his position on peace talks involving Russia and Ukraine. While he wastes no opportunity to shower his "friend" Vladimir Putin with praise, even in the midst of this carnage, he publicly despises Zelensky.
His distrust of Zelensky has its roots in the summer of 2019, when the newly elected Ukrainian president had barely been in office for two months. In a phone call on July 25, Trump asked him to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter (an advisor to the Ukrainian gas company Burisma) while the White House withheld nearly $400 million in military aid destined for kyiv. Zelensky responded evasively and never announced the investigation: the scandal broke out earlier, the aid was unblocked and that episode led to the first impeachment against Trump, who always defended that the conversation had been "perfect."
But the suspicion came from before (his 2016 campaign blamed kyiv for the fall of his campaign manager, Paul Manafort, after opaque payments from Viktor Yanukovych's pro-Russian party came to light) and worsened in September 2024, when Zelensky visited an ammunition factory in Pennsylvania with a Democratic governor in the middle of the election campaign. Added to this is a fundamental vision: Trump considers aid to Ukraine an expense with no return and sees Zelensky as the main obstacle to a quick agreement with Vladimir Putin. All of this broke out in February 2025 when he tried to humiliate him in front of the cameras in the Oval Office.
But Trump is wrong: if Zelensky left, the next one to arrive would be much tougher than him in his concessions to the Russians. According to the latest internal KIIS survey, 62% of Ukrainians are prepared to endure the war as long as necessary. Furthermore, 79% of respondents believe that Ukraine will eventually defeat Russia.
For Valeri Petrenko, a Ukrainian teacher in the city of Lviv, "it is about maintaining sovereignty over our own decisions. Ukraine is at war to maintain its freedom from Russian imperialism. We neither allow Putin to change the president nor are we going to allow Trump to do so. We will only do it when we can do it."
At the moment, no one in Ukraine believes in Trump's announced truces, never negotiated with kyiv, or in Putin's good will. The inhabitants of cities like kyiv, Kharkiv or Dnipro, visited every night by Russian drones and missiles, know that for the US president his personal businesses and those of his negotiating team with the Kremlin (Witkoff and Kushner, who do not even hide being much closer to the Russian postulates) are more important than their own lives.
