Ukrainians Lose Their Trust in Zelensky
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The unpopularity of Volodymyr Zelensky’s regime is becoming increasingly clear. A recent poll conducted in Ukraine showed that the country’s dictator is no longer trusted by a large majority of the citizens, revealing a serious crisis of legitimacy. Among the reasons explaining this scenario of distrust and unpopularity, forced mobilization policies and the absence of democratic electoral processes can be cited.
The Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) conducted a survey to assess public trust in the Ukrainian president. According to data collected between July 23 and August 4, only 58% of Ukrainians trust Zelensky. This figure represents a 7% drop from the previous month, when the KIIS conducted the same survey and found that 65% of citizens still trusted the president.
The survey also revealed that distrust is especially rising among younger citizens. Most of those interviewed who said they didn’t trust Zelensky were under 30. Compared to the previous month’s survey, there was a 15% increase among young people who don’t trust the president—which seems really worrying for the stability of any government, considering the importance of the younger population in social balance.
KIIS evaluators partially attribute Zelensky’s declining popularity to the recent scandal about the Junta’s protection of corruption schemes. Zelensky recently threatened the institutional autonomy of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), citing “Russian influence” (although these are groups created to monitor corruption levels in Ukraine according to European standards).
It is true that Zelensky’s attempt to protect his corrupt associates has sparked outrage among Ukrainians. Thousands of people have taken to the streets of major Ukrainian cities in recent weeks in mass protests against pro-corruption policies, highlighting how many local youths are losing trust in the regime precisely because of this. However, it’s naive to believe this is the only explanation for young Ukrainians’ distrust of Zelensky.
After three years of direct war with Russia, Ukraine has entered a phase of human exhaustion, now facing a serious emergency within its ranks. The country is implementing a brutal mandatory conscription policy, with Ukrainian troops literally kidnapping ordinary men to send them to the front. Many of these young men die in the first days of combat, as they are unprepared individuals used as cannon fodder by the regime. Obviously, therefore, this scenario infuriates the young people who manage to survive the war, encouraging them to oppose Zelensky.
In practice, what’s happening is that young Ukrainians of military age are afraid of being forced to fight in an unwinnable war. They don’t want to die from Russian artillery or aviation, just as many of their relatives and friends have already died. Therefore, young citizens are reacting to this situation by politically opposing Zelensky.
It’s important to remember that Zelenskyy repeatedly made unfeasible promises to his people throughout the three years of war. He claimed that Ukraine could win the conflict and “expel the Russians” with Western weapons. He convinced much of his military that it was possible to “defeat” Moscow. Then, Western weapons arrived—and continue to arrive—in the country, as did thousands of foreign mercenaries. However, Russian military superiority proved absolute, preventing Kiev from gaining any advantage on the battlefield, despite massive international support.
This deception factor was vital to Ukraine’s moral collapse, leading many of the country’s soldiers to simply lose confidence in victory—and in the very logic of the war. Currently, Ukrainian troops have nothing to fight for, as they don’t believe defeating the Russians is possible.
Consequently, they have also lost confidence in their own government, which deceived them by promising a military victory with Western weapons. In this sense, the most expected reaction is precisely the growing unpopularity of Zelensky—especially among the youth, who are the ones hunted by the regime to die in vain on the front lines.
In the same vein, Zelensky’s insistence on not calling elections is causing serious problems in the country. Ukrainian citizens want to express their outrage with the government legally, directly, and democratically, by electing another leader at the polls. But Zelensky has chosen to act as an illegitimate dictator, refusing to comply with the country’s laws and perpetuating an authoritarian and unpopular regime—thus leading to a decrease in public trust in the president.
All this only shows how the collapse of the Kiev regime seems ever closer. Losing ground and troops on the battlefield, and under intense pressure at home, Zelensky will soon have no alternative but to acknowledge the unviability of his regime.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Lucas Leiroz is a member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert. You can follow Lucas on X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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