Most Ukrainians approve of their president. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has an approval rating of 57%, according to an opinion poll conducted in Ukraine by a leading pollster.
Donald Trump mistakenly stated that Zelensky had approval ratings of just 4%. But there is no record of any poll showing Zelensky with an approval rating that low.
CNN reports that “Zelensky’s approval rating is far higher than 4%. In fact, it has been above 50% in major recent surveys.” Moreover,
Olga Onuch, a University of Manchester professor who conducts public opinion research in Ukraine with other academics, told CNN on Tuesday that their latest survey, conducted from November 22 of last year to January 7 of this year, found that “63% of Ukrainians either approve fully or tend to approve of Zelensky’s actions as president.” She said their survey was also performed by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
Tymofiy Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics and Ukraine’s economic minister in 2019 and 2020, told CNN on Tuesday, “We have never seen anything close” to a 4% approval rating for Zelensky.
Zelensky was elected in 2019 “with 73.23 percent of the vote.” That’s “the biggest landslide in the history of Ukrainian presidential elections.”
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, seizing 20% of its territory, Zelensky declared martial law. Under the Ukrainian constitution, elections cannot be held during a state of martial law, or for six months afterwards.
Under Zelensky, Ukraine has become less corrupt. Wikipedia notes that Zelensky oversaw “some limited progress in tackling corruption in Ukraine.” Ukraine is less corrupt than Russia, according to international corruption indexes.
On the Corruption Perceptions Index, Ukraine ranks #105, but Russia ranks much worse, a dismal #154, making Russia one of the world’s most corrupt countries.
Back in 2010, Ukraine was more corrupt than Russia. Today, Russia is much more corrupt than Ukraine, although Ukraine still has significant amounts of corruption.
Most U.S. aid to Ukraine has been used as intended. The fraction of U.S. aid to Ukraine that was misused is low and is much smaller than in past conflicts, such as aid to Afghanistan. Much of our aid to Afghanistan was siphoned off by corrupt Afghan elites. That is not true of aid to Ukraine, which has overwhelmingly been used for its intended purpose. As the Center for Strategic and International Studies explains,
On February 2, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said he had only received $75 billion of the $175 billion the United States had spent on Ukraine [over the years]. The cry went up, what happened to the other $100 billion? Was it lost or stolen? The answer is no. Only part of the aid goes through Ukrainian control. A large part pays for activities as a result of the war but not to Ukraine directly. These include the United States training of Ukrainian forces, global humanitarian assistance, additional costs of U.S. surge forces in Europe, and intelligence support for both NATO and Ukraine.
As CSIS has reported before, “aid to Ukraine” is a misnomer because 90 percent of military aid is spent in the United States. Of aid overall, 60 percent is spent in the United States, about 25 percent is spent in Ukraine, and the final 15 percent is spent globally…..
[$100 billion] is not missing. The funds went (mostly) to activities that arose because of the war, and all are accounted for. Some paid for sending equipment and funds directly to Ukraine. A large part went to activities that arose because of the war but were not spent in Ukraine.
