Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi topped the trust rating of Ukrainians with 64%, while in a potential first round of the presidential election Volodymyr Zelensky leads with 22,9% of the vote.
These are the results of a nationwide survey conducted by the sociological group "Rating" in early October 2026.
What are the details of the survey?
The level of trust in the incumbent president Volodymyr Zelensky is 53%, while 40% of respondents do not trust him. The head of the Main Intelligence Directorate, Kyrylo Budanov, shows a similar trust level of 53%, with 31% of citizens not trusting him.
Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov received 38% trust and 25% distrust, although 29% of respondents said they had not heard of him.
A relative majority of Ukrainians also do not know about the activities of Defense Minister Yevhen Khmara (43%) and Foreign Minister Andrii Sybyha (48%), while the trust levels for them are 29% and 24% respectively.
The highest negative rating among the figures studied was recorded for Petro Poroshenko, whom 70% of respondents do not trust, while only 24% support him.
Trust rating for Ukrainian politicians / Screenshot from the "Rating" survey
Zelensky and Zaluzhnyi top electoral sympathies
Modeling of the first round of hypothetical presidential elections shows that 22,9% of respondents are ready to vote for Volodymyr Zelensky.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi holds the second position with a narrow margin, supported by 20,2% of respondents.
The next group of candidates, with a significant gap, is led by Petro Poroshenko and Mykhailo Fedorov, each receiving 7,6% of votes. Kyrylo Budanov would get 6,7% of Ukrainians' votes.
The remaining respondents' votes were distributed among Andrii Biletskyi (5,4%), Dmytro Razumkov (5,1%), Serhii Prytula (2,4%), Yulia Tymoshenko (1,9%) and Yurii Boiko (1,4%). Another 4,5% of respondents would choose a different candidate, 5,2% would not participate in the vote, and 9,2% were undecided.
Societal expectations and attitudes toward negotiations
The study also shows complicated public expectations ahead of the winter period. More than half of citizens (55%) expect a deterioration of the situation in the country overall, and 71% of respondents foresee negative changes in the economy.
On the question of achieving peace, 57% of respondents support a cessation of hostilities and seeking compromise through negotiations involving other countries. At the same time, 56% consider territorial concessions possible only with reliable security guarantees from the United States and European partners.
As previously reported on our site, an earlier KMIS study showed that 72% of Ukrainians consider the president personally responsible for corruption in his circle. At the same time, more than 40% of Ukrainians want to see Zelensky among the presidential candidates in the upcoming elections.
Meanwhile, 71% of respondents categorically oppose holding the electoral process amid active hostilities, considering security stability the main priority.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Опитування показало рейтинг довіри українців до політиків: кому поступився Зеленський". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Channel 24.