Volodymyr Zelenskyy's approval rating in Ukraine 2019-2023

In February 2023, over 90 percent of the Ukrainian population approved of the activities of Volodymyr Zelenskyy as the president of the country. The approval rating was at approximately the same level as in June 2022. Zelenskyy's popularity within the country was significantly higher in 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, than in 2021. Zelenskyy became Ukraine’s president in the 2019 election, having gained over 73 percent of the votes.

Public confidence in Zelenskyy worldwide

In most Western countries, residents had confidence in Zelenskyy’s actions regarding global affairs, with particularly large shares of respondents expressing it in Sweden, the United Kingdom (UK), the Netherlands, Poland, Australia, and Japan. However, in some European Union (EU) members like Hungary and Greece, Zelenskyy’s confidence ratings were rather low. A similar trend was observed in Latin America, where the share of people confident in Zelenskyy ranged from 24 percent in Argentina to 33 percent in Brazil.

The tone of news articles mentioning Zelenskyy declined due to the war

Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, global news articles mentioning Zelenskyy have mostly concerned the war and thus have included words with a negative language tone. As a result, the sentiment score of online news articles containing the president’s name declined from -1.34 in 2021 to -2.94 in 2022. The tone was less negative in Brazil and Poland than on average worldwide.