President Volodymyr Zelensky saw a 14 percentage point increase in his trust rating after Donald Trump began a pressure campaign against Ukraine, according to a Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) poll released October 20. This swing pulled Zelensky back from a symbolic low. Between October 8 and 9, 43% of Ukrainians trusted Zelensky while 52% did not. This figure rose to 57% among those interviewed between October 10 and 16, while distrust fell to 39%. KIIS reported that trust in Zelensky rose to 57% among respondents interviewed after Washington’s diesel deal with Moscow, up from 43% in the preceding two days of the survey period. Across the entire survey period from October 8 to 16, 54% of respondents expressed trust in the president while 41% expressed distrust. Of those who trust him, 22% said they trust him completely and 32% said they somewhat trust him. Of those who do not, 24% said they do not trust him at all and 17% said they somewhat distrust him.
Pressure from Washington and the diesel deal
KIIS states the timing suggests a "rally-around-the-flag" effect following US pressure. On October 9, Donald Trump announced a plan to purchase Russian diesel despite years of US sanctions on Russian energy products and ordered Ukraine to stop attacking Russian oil refineries. This move follows Trump’s shift toward Moscow to lower domestic fuel prices. The US Treasury authorized transactions in Russian-origin diesel until April 7, 2027.
| Survey Metric | Percentage/Value |
|---|---|
| Full sample trust | 54% |
| Full sample distrust | 41% |
| Oct 8-9 trust | 43% |
| Oct 10-16 trust | 57% |
| Total respondents | 1,031 |
Anton Hrushetskyi, executive director of KIIS, said that while Ukrainians are "sincerely outraged by cases of corruption among members of the head of state’s team", critics fall much quieter regarding relations with other states and defending Ukraine abroad. When Western commentators accuse Zelensky of "intransigence" or "escalation", ordinary Ukrainians perceive this as an attack on Ukraine and Ukrainians in general, according to Hrushetskyi. The higher trust reading followed Washington’s push for Kyiv to give ground, though the polling comparison alone cannot establish what caused the change. Last month, 50% of Ukrainians named corruption as a bigger worry than Russia’s missile strikes. The overall figures were identical to those recorded in late August and early September, and this suggests that confidence in Zelensky has remained virtually unchanged over the past month.
Negotiations and domestic political standing
The survey included 1,031 Ukrainian citizens aged 18 and older through computer-assisted telephone interviews. These interviews used a random sample of cell phone numbers across all regions of Ukraine under government control. The data shows that 54% of the full sample trusted Zelensky while 41% did not. This balance of 13 points remained the same as figures recorded in late August and early September. The margin of error for the 757 people interviewed after October 10 is 4.6 percentage points, while the margin for the 274 people interviewed on October 8-9 is 7.7 percentage points.
On October 15, Zelensky lifted a three-day pause on refinery strikes as Russian attacks on the Ukrainian grid continued. On October 20, he offered a 30-day halt to strikes on Russian refineries in exchange for more US Patriot missiles, as Ukraine’s interceptor stocks run dry. This follows previous diplomatic shifts, such as in 2025 when trust had fallen to about half by December 2024, then climbed to 74% by May 2025 as Trump publicly attacked Zelensky, claiming his support was 4%, before sliding back below 60% by the summer. In 2025, approval ratings rose to 68% following a heated exchange with Trump in the Oval Office. This rally was smaller in scale and much shorter in time compared to the May 2022 surge, when trust jumped to 90% from 37% in February 2022.
Currently, 73% of respondents say authorities should not be more accommodating in negotiations with Russia, while 20% say they should. Six in ten Ukrainians still reject withdrawing from the parts of Donbas that Kyiv holds. Earlier in October, a separate KIIS poll found 53% said Zelensky should not seek a second term. The trajectory of trust depends on the communication and actions of partners in the West, but Hrushetskyi warned that both the President and his team must understand that their domestic steps have already cost them the loss of a significant part of trust.
