IN A PRESS conference yesterday, Donald Trump claimed that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has an approval rating of just 4%.

A poll released today by the respected Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) found that, in fact, 57% of respondents approved of Zelenskyy.

The same poll, of 1,000 people, also found that 37% said they did not approve of the President. The remaining respondents were undecided.

This marks an increase from the most recent poll by KIIS in December, 2024, which put Zelenskyy’s approval rating at 52%.

KIIS is a private Ukrainian research company.

Speaking at the conference held in his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump appeared to tell reporters that Zelenskyy was effectively to blame for Russia invading Ukraine in 2022.

“I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters when asked about the Ukrainian reaction to not being included in peace negotiations with Russia.

“Today I heard, ‘oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years… You should have never started it. You could have made a deal,” he said.

Trump also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month after US and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia yesterday, in a shift that has alarmed European leaders.

Trump also ramped up pressure on Zelenskyy to hold elections – echoing one of Moscow’s key demands.

“We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine. Where we have martial law — essentially martial law — in Ukraine. Where the leader in Ukraine, I hate to say it, but he’s down to 4% approval rating,” Trump said.

Ukraine has been under martial law, a measure approved by the Ukrainian parliament, due to the 2022 invasion by Russia. However, an EU commission report in 2023 found that the “measures taken are temporary and overall proportionate to the situation in the country”.

Elections had been scheduled for last year, though have been suspended while martial law is in effect. However, Zelenskyy, who was elected in 2019, does not hold a 4% approval rating as Trump claimed.

Instead, Zelenskyy has shown approval ratings consistently above 50% since the invasion, including a high of 90% in March 2022, just after Russia launched its mass attack.

The most recent KIIS poll was conducted between 4 and 9 February, and involved 1,000 telephone interviews based on a random sample of mobile phone numbers in all regions of Ukraine that were controlled by the government.

It noted that the statistical errors of such a sample should be less than 4.1%.

The survey results, which acknowledges ongoing conversations about peace plans and concerns about the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government, notes “the majority in Ukrainian society continues to adhere to the opinion that elections should be held after the war and the priority is to strengthen the defense capability”.

Trump’s own approval rating stands at about 44%, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released today. 

Zelenskyy responded to Trump’s 4% claim, saying that Trump’s figure “comes from Russia”.

“Unfortunately, President Trump, who we have great respect for as leader of the American people … lives in this disinformation space,” Zelenskyy told reporters in Kyiv.

With reporting from AFP

The Journal’s FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here. You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here.