By Olena Harmash, Reuters
US President Donald Trump and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky meet in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, 28 February, 2025. Photo: SAUL LOEB / AFP
President Volodymyr Zelensky's approval rating has risen by 10 percentage points since his White House spat with US President Donald Trump, a poll by a leading Ukrainian pollster showed on Friday.
The poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) showed that 67 percent of respondents trusted Zelensky in March, up from 57 percent a month earlier.
The survey was conducted from 14 February 14 to 4 March - a challenging time for Zelensky as Kyiv's relations with the United States, its biggest military backer, plunged into crisis after the Oval Office meeting on 28 February. Anton Hrushetskyi, KIIS' executive director, said the poll showed Ukrainians were rallying behind Zelensky more than three years after Russia's full-scale invasion.
"Ukrainians perceive the rhetoric of the new US administration as an attack on the whole of Ukraine and all Ukrainians," Hrushetskyi said in a statement.
He said Ukrainians want peace but not a peace that comes at too high a cost.
"Ukrainians really want peace, but our results consistently show that the vast majority are against peace on any terms," he said. Zelensky, now 47, was elected Ukraine's president in 2019. Since the Russian invasion in February 2022, he has became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance.
After last week's meeting, Trump said that Zelensky - whom he had already branded a "dictator" - was an obstacle to his vision of bringing peace to Ukraine.
The US has since then paused military aid to Ukraine and intelligence sharing.
Zelensky has tried to repair ties, saying this week that Kyiv was ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible and work under Trump's leadership, calling the way things had gone in Washington "regrettable".
The pollsters surveyed 1029 people via telephone interviews, and the results were similar across the country, they said. But in the east Zelensky's trust ratings were lower - at about 60 percent.
Ukraine's eastern regions are where the fiercest fighting is taking place, with Russian troops devastating cities and towns and taking village after village.
The poll showed that 29 percent of respondents did not trust Zelensky at the start of March, down from 37 percent at the start of February. (Reporting by Olena Harmash, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
- Reuters
