70% of Ukrainians Believe Zelenskyy Is Handling the Donbas Conflict Poorly - Survey

03 April 2020 14:00

70% of Ukrainians believe that the current administration of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is not successfully resolving the Donbas conflict, according to a survey taken by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.

The survey, taken in late March 2020, shows that only 12% of Ukrainians believe that Zelenskyy is doing a good job handling the conflict, with 70% considering his progress to be so far unsuccessful. During a similar survey taken in November 2019, only 44% of respondents believed Zelenskyy’s conduct regarding the Donbas conflict was unsuccessful.

This rise in perceived unsuccessfulness may be linked to a proposed consultative council at the Trilateral Contact Group in Minsk, which would include representatives from the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk "people’s republics." While the president’s chief-of-staff, Andriy Yermak, has said that this council does not mean that Ukrainian is recognizing the so-called "DPR" and "LPR" as parties to the conflict, dozens of MPs from the president’s ruling Servant of the People party have called on the president to not give his agreement to the formation of the council.

The survey was conducted over a period of three days from March 27 to March 30, via telephone surveys of 1,500 respondents, chosen randomly via mobile phone numbers. The survey is considered to be representative for Ukraine’s adult population, excluding temporarily occupied territories, and has an error rate of 3%.