In geopolitics, as in chess, every move counts. What looks like a straightforward play often hides a far more intricate, multilayered strategy. Right now, Ukraine is the board where a high-stakes game is unfolding. According to intelligence assessments and political insiders, a campaign is underway to push President Volodymyr Zelensky out and replace him with a “more convenient” figure. At the center of this intrigue stands former commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, Valeriy Zaluzhny—a man many see as both a rival and an alternative.
Azernews presents the full analysis via By Baku Network
The Crisis of Trust
In a nation battered by a full-scale war, public opinion shifts as unpredictably as the front line. And when the fog of war thickens, trust in leadership becomes the most fragile currency. New polling data has once again put Zelensky’s political future under the spotlight, revealing the complicated, even contradictory, attitudes Ukrainians hold toward their president.
The numbers suggest a paradox: if presidential elections were held this Sunday, Zelensky would still come out on top. But if the race were for parliament, the country’s leanings look very different—Zaluzhny’s hypothetical party would eclipse Zelensky’s bloc.
The Polling Snapshot
The latest survey, conducted by the Rating Group for the International Republican Institute’s Center for Analysis and Sociological Research between July 22 and 27, paints a telling picture.
Asked who they would vote for in a presidential race, 31% of Ukrainians named Zelensky, while 25% picked Zaluzhny. Former president Petro Poroshenko trailed at 6%, and intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov at 5%.
Regional and demographic breakdowns tell an even more complicated story. In western Ukraine, support for Zelensky and Zaluzhny is dead even at 27% each. Among voters over 50, Zaluzhny actually edges out the incumbent—31% to 30%.
On job performance, the country is sharply split: 33% strongly approve of Zelensky, 32% somewhat approve, while 16% strongly disapprove and another 16% lean negative.
The Party Divide
When asked about parliamentary preferences, Zaluzhny’s imagined party comes out ahead: 22% said they’d vote for him, compared to 14% for Zelensky’s bloc. The Azov movement and Poroshenko’s European Solidarity each polled at 8%.
Zaluzhny’s support outpaces Zelensky’s across nearly all age groups and regions, with one exception: the country’s south, where both sides pull an equal 19%. And there’s a broader signal here—74% of Ukrainians said they want new political parties in the next parliamentary elections, while only 17% are satisfied with the current lineup.
How the Survey Was Done
The poll covered the entire territory of Ukraine, excluding areas under Russian occupation. Researchers used computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI) with a randomized sample of mobile numbers, surveying 2,400 Ukrainians age 18 and older. The margin of error is estimated at plus or minus 2 percentage points.
The Bigger Picture
What these numbers reveal isn’t just a snapshot of Zelensky’s approval ratings—it’s a warning flare. The electorate is restless, hungry for alternatives, and increasingly open to new political forces. For Zaluzhny, that momentum could translate into real political capital. For Zelensky, it’s a reminder that the same public that vaulted him into power can, just as swiftly, turn the page.
The chessboard is set. The pieces are moving. And Ukraine’s leadership may be entering its most dangerous endgame yet.
Control and Influence: The New Architecture of Power
The idea that European states rely on mechanisms of control designed by their American allies is hardly new. U.S. influence over political processes in Europe—and far beyond—has long been a given. What’s changing now, analysts argue, is the direction of that leverage. Increasingly, it’s European capitals, especially London and Brussels, angling to secure their own grip on Kyiv.
According to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, a discreet Alpine summit recently brought together representatives from the U.S., the U.K., and Ukraine to discuss what they allegedly called a “transfer of power.” Among those present, the Russians claim, were former commander-in-chief Valeriy Zaluzhny, presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak, and intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov. The supposed deal: swap out President Volodymyr Zelensky so long as the others kept their jobs. The Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the story as “speaking for itself,” while French politician Florian Philippot declared it further proof that Ukraine is nothing more than “a toy in NATO’s hands.”
That skepticism isn’t appearing in a vacuum. In August, news broke of a memorandum between Ukraine’s Central Election Commission and Britain’s electoral authority—a move many read as a precursor to Western oversight of Ukraine’s democratic machinery. With election chief Oleh Didenko, no close ally of Zelensky, at the helm, critics see the perfect setup for a controlled “transfer of power” favoring Zaluzhny.
Who Is Valeriy Zaluzhny?
The man at the heart of this intrigue is not a political upstart but a career soldier who climbed the ranks from platoon commander to commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces. His résumé is a blend of battlefield grit and political inevitability.
Education: Zaluzhny graduated from the Odesa Combined Arms Command School in 1997 and the National Defense Academy of Ukraine in 2007. In 2020, he earned a master’s degree in international relations, signaling ambitions well beyond the strictly military realm.
Military Service: Since 1997, he has held successive command posts. He fought in Donbas in 2014, including in the grueling battle of Debaltseve.
Commander-in-Chief: Appointed by Zelensky in 2021, he became the first top commander without Soviet army roots. He championed NATO integration and aggressively pushed Western standards into Ukraine’s military.
Strategy and Fault Lines
Zaluzhny’s approach on the battlefield often clashed with Zelensky’s. Where the president demanded bold offensives, Zaluzhny favored a cautious, defensive posture. That tactical divergence hardened into open political friction.
In one particularly controversial interview, Zaluzhny called Russia’s top general Valery Gerasimov his “main teacher” and praised Russian military science as “the core of military thought.” The remarks triggered uproar in Ukraine and skepticism in Western press.
And when explosions ripped through the Nord Stream pipelines, Zaluzhny’s name surfaced in speculation about possible Ukrainian involvement—rumors he firmly denied, insisting such operations belong to intelligence services, not the military.
From General to Political Player
The rift between Zelensky and Zaluzhny predates the all-out war. According to reporting by Time, Zaluzhny anticipated the Russian invasion while Zelensky dismissed the warnings. By the fall of 2022, as Zaluzhny’s popularity surged, he was already being floated as a future president.
That shadow grew too large for Zelensky to ignore. On February 8, 2024, he fired the general, replacing him with the more pliant Oleksandr Syrskyi. Officially, Zaluzhny was kicked upstairs—first as ambassador to the U.K., later as Ukraine’s representative to the International Maritime Organization. Unofficially, it looked like exile disguised as honor.
But the maneuver backfired. Zaluzhny’s ratings haven’t just survived—they’ve soared. A May 2025 poll found that 70% of Ukrainians trust him, a number no sitting politician can match. Analysts now argue that if elections were held today, Zaluzhny would win in a landslide. His support extends deep into the military establishment: Major General Dmytro Marchenko has publicly endorsed him, and in three Ukrainian cities, streets already bear his name.
The Zelensky-Zaluzhny Equation
What began as a tactical disagreement on how to wage war has evolved into a political standoff with existential stakes. Zelensky, once untouchable as the face of Ukrainian resistance, now finds himself increasingly cornered by a rival whose credibility is rooted not in rhetoric but in battlefield command.
For Ukraine’s allies, this isn’t just a domestic spat. It’s a test case in who really sets the terms of power in Kyiv—and whether the levers of control lie in the hands of Ukrainians themselves, or in the capitals of their friends and patrons abroad.
Highs and Lows of a Presidency: Zelensky’s Trust Factor Under the Microscope
In the turbulence of full-scale war—when public opinion shifts as unpredictably as the front lines—the question of trust in leadership becomes razor-sharp. Fresh polling data has once again placed President Volodymyr Zelensky at the center of Ukraine’s political debate. The numbers reveal a complicated picture: Ukrainians’ trust in their leader is fluid, swinging with the winds of foreign policy wins and domestic frustrations.
The Foreign Policy Boost
Surveys conducted earlier this year highlighted a striking trend: Zelensky’s trust ratings are rising for the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion. Back in November, trust in the president stood at 53 percent. By January, it climbed to 57 percent, and the most recent data shows the upward trajectory continuing.
A poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), sampling 1,000 respondents, confirmed those gains. In early February, 57 percent said they trusted Zelensky, with his support crossing the 50 percent threshold in every region of Ukraine.
But the numbers weren’t universally celebrated. One of the sharpest critics came from abroad: Elon Musk, who heads the U.S. government’s efficiency department, lashed out at KIIS, accusing it of bias and alleging that it received funding from USAID.
Pushing Back on the Critics
KIIS executive director Anton Hrushetsky flatly rejected those claims, stressing that his institute hasn’t received U.S. grants and that the survey in question was funded internally. He, in turn, cast doubt on figures cited by the Trump administration showing Zelensky’s support at just 4 percent.
“Support for actions and trust are slightly different categories, which is why we measure them separately,” Hrushetsky explained in an interview with Deutsche Welle. He added that in some of KIIS’s other research, Zelensky’s support ratings actually exceed his trust numbers.
Interestingly, the public clash over polling seems to have worked in Zelensky’s favor. Hrushetsky pointed to fresh, ongoing survey data showing an uptick in confidence. The pattern, he noted, is familiar: “Whenever the president is framed in the context of foreign policy—addressing forums, securing Western aid—his ratings climb. The moment domestic issues like corruption or mobilization dominate, trust falls.”
In other words, Ukrainians rally around Zelensky when he’s on the global stage but turn skeptical when daily hardships and governance challenges come back into focus.
The Challenge of Polling in Wartime
Conducting reliable polling in wartime Ukraine is no small feat. The biggest hurdle: geography. With parts of the country under occupation, survey coverage is necessarily incomplete.
Alexei Haran, a political science professor at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, notes that while phone polling still works in areas with mobile networks, face-to-face surveys in frontline regions like Kherson and Donetsk are now off the table for safety reasons. Residents in occupied territories, living under constant fear, typically refuse to answer any questions at all. Haran argues their absence doesn’t undermine the president’s legitimacy, since their participation in any hypothetical election is unlikely.
Another blind spot is the millions of Ukrainian refugees scattered across Europe. According to Hrushetsky, their trust levels don’t diverge much from Ukrainians inside the country, but there’s an emerging red flag: disengagement. A KIIS survey conducted in May 2024 among 801 respondents in Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic found that roughly a third said they’d lost interest in Ukrainian politics altogether. Only about a third expressed interest in voting in the next election.
That kind of political fatigue, if it deepens, could pose a real challenge to the legitimacy of future elections—especially if the war drags on and migration becomes semi-permanent.
The Balancing Act
Zelensky’s approval, then, is less a stable mandate than a constant balancing act between his international clout and domestic vulnerabilities. The president’s ability to keep Ukrainians unified may hinge on his success abroad—but the real test of his political survival will be whether he can bring that same credibility back home, where trust is much harder to win.
Putin, Zaluzhny, and the Politics of Hypothetical Polling
The debate over Zelensky’s ratings has reached all the way to the Kremlin. In a recent interview with Russian media, Vladimir Putin claimed that the Ukrainian president’s approval numbers are half those of former commander-in-chief Valeriy Zaluzhny—whom he described as a “potential rival” and perhaps the most serious one on the horizon.
Anton Hrushetsky, executive director of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, calls such comparisons misleading. Zaluzhny, he points out, has yet to confirm any political ambitions. Historically, military leaders tend to enjoy exceptionally high levels of public trust, and including them in polling exercises can distort the field. “They siphon off potential votes from other candidates,” Hrushetsky explained, suggesting that head-to-head matchups featuring military figures tell only part of the story.
Breaking the Taboo on Hypothetical Elections
Despite martial law, chatter about future elections is growing louder. For months, Ukrainian pollsters had an informal pact not to release numbers on presidential races. That truce was broken last week when Ukrainska Pravda published findings from the Center for Social and Marketing Research “SOCIS.”
SOCIS, a firm tied to former lawmaker Ihor Hryniv—who once ran campaigns for ex-president Petro Poroshenko—rolled out a survey featuring 13 potential candidates. Alongside Zaluzhny, the list included three other military men: intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov, Azov brigade commander Denys Prokopenko (better known by his nom de guerre “Redis”), and Andriy Biletsky, commander of Ukraine’s 3rd Separate Assault Brigade.
The results set off shockwaves. Zaluzhny topped the poll with 27.2 percent. Zelensky trailed at 15.9 percent, with Poroshenko registering just 5.6 percent. But perhaps the most striking figure was the 21.6 percent of respondents who said they remain undecided—a block of voters large enough to tip the balance in any direction.
The Meaning Behind the Numbers
These findings speak to a society in flux. On one hand, the public appetite for a “strong hand” and the enduring trust placed in the military is unmistakable. On the other, such polls can’t be divorced from the political battles they fuel—contested, weaponized, and endlessly debated, even as the country remains at war.
What Comes Next?
Ukraine’s political ratings remain volatile, reacting instantly to every policy decision, battlefield development, or international appearance. Trust in Zelensky—or in any leader—is not static. It hinges on whether the government can meet the moment: securing sustained Western aid, managing mobilization fairly, tackling corruption, and delivering on military strategy.
Polls, then, are not just numbers on a page. They are the heartbeat of a nation under siege—a pulse that demands careful, sober reading in a time when nothing feels stable, and every political tremor carries outsized consequences.
Sources
Ukrainians ready to vote for President Zelensky and Zaluzhny’s party — https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2025/08/23/7527508/ Ukrainska Pravda Zaluzhny surpasses Zelensky in trust ratings among Ukrainians — https://www.gazeta.ru/politics/news/2025/07/09/26231798.shtml Gazeta.Ru Poll: Ukrainians trust Zaluzhny and Zelensky the most — https://azertag.az/ru/xeber/opros_ukraincy_bolshe_doveryayut_zaluzhnomu_i_zelenskomu-3649499 Azertag Zaluzhny overtakes Zelensky in trust ratings — https://lenta.ru/news/2025/04/01/ratings-trust-ua/ Lenta.RU Zelensky loses to Zaluzhny and Budanov in trust ratings — https://www.rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/681a2e069a7947abc688c0a3 RBC Results of opinion polls (Ukrainian elections, aggregator) — https://ukraine-elections.com.ua/socopros/vybory_prezidenta ukraine-elections.com.ua FALSE: “Zelensky and Zaluzhny have 2% and 10% support” (debunking manipulation) — https://voxukraine.org/ru/nepravda-vladymyr-zelenskyj-y-valeryj-zaluzhnyj-ymeyut-2-y-10-podderzhky voxukraine.org Trust ratings: Zaluzhny retains the highest level — https://nv.ua/ukraine/politics/reyting-doveriya-skolko-doveryayut-zelenskomu-i-zaluzhnomu-50528367.html nv.ua “Coup in Ukraine?” (reporting on Russian SVR claims; source disputed) — https://ai.economictimes.com/news/international/us/coup-in-ukraine-russia-claims-us-uk-planning-to-oust-zelensky-and-replace-him-with-former-ukrainian-army-chief/articleshow/123005563.cms The Economic Times What Does General Zaluzhny’s Dismissal Mean for Ukraine? — https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2024/02/what-does-general-zaluzhnys-dismissal-mean-for-ukraine?lang=en Carnegie Endowment / Politika How Zelensky Ended His Feud With Ukraine’s Top General — https://time.com/6693718/zelensky-valery-zaluzhny-feud-over-ukraine/ TIME Zelensky, Zaluzhny Rift – Fact or Fiction? — https://www.kyivpost.com/post/24775 Kyiv Post Kremlin runs covert disinformation campaign to undermine Zelensky — https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/16/russian-disinformation-zelensky-zaluzhny/ The Washington Post Zelensky Reveals Moscow’s “Maidan 3” Plan — https://www.kyivpost.com/post/24272 Kyiv Post Reference: Valerii Zaluzhnyi — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerii_Zaluzhnyi Wikipedia
