Ukraine’s Mood Swing

Is Ukraine Turning on Zelensky?

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Analysis:

Ukraine’s Mood Swing

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Analysis

Ukraine’s Mood Swing

Public sentiment is turning against Zelensky amid corruption concerns and years of war.

By **Adrian Karatnycky**, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the founder of Myrmidon Group.

!A close shot shows Zelensky from the shoulders up, mouth open as he speaks, against a bright yellow wall in the background.

*A close shot shows Zelensky from the shoulders up, mouth open as he speaks, against a bright yellow wall in the background.*

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky attends a meeting in Belgrade, Serbia, on Aug. 8. Andrej Isakovic / AFP

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September 3, 2026, 6:00 AM

For most of his presidency and especially since Russia launched its full-scale war, Ukrainian voters have rallied around Volodymyr Zelensky as a pillar of national resilience and unity. That’s for good reason: He has been an effective wartime leader and helped mobilize the democratic world on Ukraine’s behalf.

But now, after more than seven years in office, four and a half years of war with Russia, and a series of scandals involving his leadership team and close friends, Zelensky appears to have lost the nation’s political support. Indeed, polling published in early August points to a major mood swing among Ukrainians, suggesting that many of them have lost faith in Zelensky and would vote him out of office at the earliest opportunity.

For most of his presidency and especially since Russia launched its full-scale war, Ukrainian voters have rallied around Volodymyr Zelensky as a pillar of national resilience and unity. That’s for good reason: He has been an effective wartime leader and helped mobilize the democratic world on Ukraine’s behalf.

But now, after more than seven years in office, four and a half years of war with Russia, and a series of scandals involving his leadership team and close friends, Zelensky appears to have lost the nation’s political support. Indeed, polling published in early August points to a major mood swing among Ukrainians, suggesting that many of them have lost faith in Zelensky and would vote him out of office at the earliest opportunity.

This swing in sentiment is likely to gain further momentum amid a new scandal involving the president’s key staff. Regrettably, Zelensky has spoken little of the alleged misdeeds of those in his inner circle. He highlights that he is not the subject of any investigations by anti-corruption agencies—a deceptive claim, since the Ukrainian Constitution bars such institutions from investigating or bringing criminal charges against a sitting president.

This lack of moral compass is all the more shocking given the extravagant promises that Zelensky made during his electoral campaign in 2019, when he guaranteed prosecutions and convictions of corrupt officials within months of taking office. Yet more than a dozen members of his party’s legislature, numerous government ministers, and members of his presidential office have been implicated or charged with corruption and illegal enrichment.

Recent polling from Ukrainian political research company SOCIS shows that Ukrainians now regard corruption as a greater problem than the war itself, in part because they link Ukraine’s fate on the battlefield to corruption at the highest levels of the state. Fully 90 percent of Ukrainians believe that corruption stands at a high or extremely high level. Most significantly and most emblematic of the shift, nearly 57 percent of Ukrainians blame Zelensky for the prevalence of corruption, nearly double the number in a similar poll by SOCIS in April 2025. The SOCIS polling also projects that three different rivals would beat him in a second-round election, each by a landslide margin of around 2-to-1.

Zelensky’s loss of support is largely a self-inflicted wound, the product of a philosophy of governance based on rule through a small group of functionaries prized for their personal loyalty. For years, Zelensky has touted and defended this highly centralized system of governance, in which nearly all decision-making emanates from the presidential office. In December 2023, he famously declared that he relies on a team of five to six key managers to run the country’s affairs. Such centralization, while in violation of the constitution, was long accepted by the public as necessary amid the wartime emergency.

In the past year, however, numerous scandals inside the heart of Zelensky’s office have shaken public confidence, and his system of rule through close confidants and managers is a shambles. Four of Zelensky’s top managers are implicated in allegations of illicit activities.

Andriy Smyrnov, a former deputy head of the presidential office, was indicted and brought before the High Anti-Corruption Court on charges of illicit enrichment and money laundering. In January, Rostyslav Shurma, a former deputy head for economic issues in the presidential office, was served with a notice of suspicion of involvement in a multimillion-dollar scheme involving state “green tariffs” earned by his brother’s solar power facilities; he now lives in Germany and has not returned to Ukraine.

Oleh Tatarov—a deputy head of the presidential office and perhaps Zelensky’s most influential current aide—likely benefited from the transfer of a bribery case against him from the independent National Anti-Corruption Bureau of U