Zelensky’s approval rating falls below 50%

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story stated that President Volodymyr Zelensky’s rating stood at 51.6%. After it was published, the pollster corrected its data, changing it to 49%. 

Less than half of Ukrainians still believe in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s ability to lead the country.

Confidence in Zelensky’s leadership stood at 49.4% at the beginning of January, according to a poll conducted by the Center of Social Monitoring and the Oleksandr Yaremenko Ukrainian Institute for Social Research Center.

The survey also shows that 39.3% of Ukrainians do not trust Zelensky, while 11.3% said they have “no opinion.”

Compiled using 2,003 respondents across Ukraine with the exception of the occupied territories of Crimea and Donbas, the survey only showed a slight fall in popularity for Zelensky.

After a landslide victory in the presidential election in April 2019, Zelensky’s popularity plummeted from 73% in September to 52% at the end of November.

Zelensky has made a number of unpopular decisions in recent months, such as pushing for opening Ukraine’s land market and agreeing to the prisoner swap of Dec. 29, 2019, in which five former Berkut riot police officers suspected of murder were released to Russia. Many in Ukraine expressed outrage that to bring 76 soldiers and civilians linked to the war in Donbas home, Ukraine sent 124 prisoners to Russian-proxies in the Donbas who were suspected or charged with crimes unrelated to the war.

Zelensky’s party, Servant of the People, hasn’t suffered such a decrease in its rating. More than 39% of the participants in the survey said that they would vote for Servant of the People if there were a parliamentary election coming up. At the actual election in July, the party got 43% of the vote.

After Zelensky, the second most-trusted politician is Speaker of the Parliament Dmytro Razumkov, who is trusted by 36% of the survey participants. The Verkhovna Rada, Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk and his Cabinet are relatively unpopular – they are trusted by some 23% of respondents.

The survey also asked people’s opinions about some of the recent political scandals. For example, 68% of respondents had heard about an audiotape of Honcharuk’s meeting leaked online. Some 38% said that their perception of Honcharuk got worse after they heard him talking about Zelensky “not understanding the economy” on the tape, while only 24% said that the tape made them like Zelensky less.