Trust in President Volodymyr Zelenskiy rose after the US struck a diesel deal with Russia and stepped up pressure on Kyiv, with KIIS saying the timing suggested a rally-around-the-flag effect.
Of the respondents interviewed on October 8-9, 43% trusted the president and 52% did not, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) said on October 20. Among those interviewed on October 10-16, after the diesel deal was announced, 57% trusted him and 39% did not.
The swing pulled Zelenskiy back from a symbolic low. His standing has been worn down by corruption scandals around his inner circle, and last month half of Ukrainians named corruption as a bigger worry than Russia's missile strikes. The higher trust reading followed Washington’s push for Kyiv to give ground, though the polling comparison alone cannot establish what caused the change.
"If it weren't for the 'diesel deal' and further pressure on Ukraine, and if the trends we saw on October 8-9 had continued, we could have recorded (with this monitoring question) trust below 50% and a negative balance for the first time," said Anton Hrushetskyi, executive director of KIIS.
Trust in Zelenskiy was 57% among respondents interviewed after Washington’s diesel deal with Moscow, up from 43% in the preceding two days, KIIS said.
Across the full sample of 1,031 adults, 54% trusted Zelenskiy and 41% did not, a balance of +13 points and the same as in late August and early September. Some 22% trusted him completely and 32% rather trusted him, while 24% did not trust him at all and 17% rather did not.
KIIS cautioned that trust has sometimes come out slightly lower in the first days of fieldwork, so part of the gap may be down to method. But it said earlier gaps had been much smaller and that it was "most likely seeing a 'rallying around the flag' effect following pressure from the USA". The margin of error is 7.7 percentage points for the 274 people interviewed on October 8-9 and 4.6 points for the 757 interviewed afterwards.
Hrushetskyi said many Ukrainians are "sincerely outraged by cases of corruption among members of the head of state's team", but critics fall much quieter when it comes to relations with other states and defending Ukraine abroad. When Western public figures and commentators accuse Zelenskiy of "intransigence" or "escalation", "ordinary Ukrainians perceive this as an attack on Ukraine and Ukrainians in general", he said, since it is Russia that is demanding Ukrainian land it does not even control.
Some 73% of respondents said the authorities should not be more accommodating in negotiations with Russia, against 20% who said they should. The same survey found six in ten Ukrainians still reject withdrawing from the parts of Donbas that Kyiv holds.
KIIS said it could not yet tell how strong or lasting the effect would be. Trust jumped to 90% in May 2022 from 37% in February 2022, before the full-scale invasion. The 2025 rally was "smaller in scale and much shorter in time": trust had fallen to about half by December 2024, then climbed to 74% by May 2025 as Trump publicly attacked Zelenskiy, claiming his support was 4%, before sliding back below 60% by the summer.
Hrushetskyi said the trajectory depends largely on "the communication and actions of partners in the West". He also 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". In the same KIIS series, 53% said Zelenskiy should not seek a second term in a poll published earlier in October.
Trump announced the diesel arrangement with Russian President Vladimir Putin on October 9, and the US Treasury authorised transactions in Russian-origin diesel until April 7, 2027. Washington has since pressed Kyiv to stop striking Russian refineries while refusing Ukraine anything in return.
Zelenskiy lifted a three-day pause on refinery strikes on October 15 as Russian attacks on Ukraine's 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.