Survey: 42% of Ukrainians do not want to see current officials in power after war

Nearly half of Ukrainians believe there are genuine professionals among current authorities and are willing to see them remain in office after the war, while 42% do not want any current officials to stay in power.

Source: a survey by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) conducted on 23-29 January

Quote: "As the survey results show, half of respondents (48%) believe that there are real professionals among the current government and that they can remain in power after the war. However, only slightly fewer (42%) consider the current government to be completely tainted and argue that none of its representatives should remain in power after the war."

Details: KIIS reports a link between trust in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and confidence in today's leaders. Those who trust him are more likely to support keeping certain officials in power after the war.

However, even among those who "completely" trust the president, 19% consider the authorities to be completely tainted and do not want anyone to remain in power after the war.

Trust in the president as of the end of January remains high.

"So, currently, the majority of Ukrainians – 61% – continue to trust the President, 33% do not trust him. The balance of trust-distrust is +28%. In mid-January 2026, the indicators were almost identical," the sociologists said.

Of the 61% who trust the president, 25% say they "completely" trust him, while 36% "rather" trust him. Among the 33% who do not trust him, 17% say they "completely do not trust" him, and 16% "rather do not trust" him.

The survey was conducted from 23 to 29 January. Using telephone interviews based on a random sample of mobile numbers, 1,003 respondents aged 18 and over were surveyed. All respondents were living in territory controlled by the Ukrainian government at the time of the survey. Residents of areas temporarily not under Ukrainian control were not included, although some respondents were internally displaced persons who had moved from occupied territories. The survey did not include citizens who left Ukraine after 24 February 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%. At the same time, an experiment was conducted for the question about trust in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, where half of the respondents (i.e. about 500) were asked a regular direct question (to what extent the respondent trusts or does not trust him), and the other half were asked the "imagined acquaintance" method. Therefore, for this question, the error does not exceed 5.8%.

Under conditions of war, a certain systematic deviation is added on top of the formal margin of error. However, the sociologists believe the results remain highly representative and allow a reasonably reliable analysis of public sentiment.

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