Just 7 percent of Ukrainians approve of US leadership: Gallup

A mere 7 percent of Ukrainian respondents to a recent survey approve of U.S. leadership, as the Russian invasion of its eastern European neighbor approaches four-and-a-half years.

The survey, which Gallup conducted in April and released on Tuesday, found Ukrainians’ approval of American leadership fell 9 percentage points from 2025 to 2026. Nearly 8 in 10 Ukrainians, meanwhile, disapproved of U.S. leadership.

Polling on the matter has flipped on its head since 2022, the year Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

That year, two-thirds of Ukrainian respondents told Gallup they approved of U.S. leadership, while 16 percent disapproved — responses that came as former President Biden and European leaders united in backing Ukraine militarily and imposing economic sanctions on Russia.

Throughout his second term, President Trump has unsuccessfully sought to negotiate a peace between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Trump has vacillated between criticizing both leaders — including during an infamous Oval Office meeting with Zelensky just over a month after he was sworn in, when he told the Ukrainian leaders he did not “have the cards” in the war and was “gambling with World War III” by not accepting a ceasefire without security guarantees.

Trump has since met with Putin once and with Zelensky multiple times, including when he met with the latter at a G-7 meeting in France earlier this month.

“Russia should make a deal. Russia’s lost tremendous amounts of people, and so has Ukraine,” Trump said after meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart.

As of earlier this month, the conflict has resulted in nearly 56,000 civilian casualties in Ukraine, with 3.7 million Ukrainians displaced within the country according to the Global Conflict Tracker at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The tracker also notes Ukraine has received roughly $188 billion in aid from the U.S. and $197 billion from the European Union since January 2022.

Earlier this month, Ukraine’s top official in charge of returning children kidnapped by Russia asked for further U.S. assistance in that effort. Russia’s abductions of Ukrainian children have resulted in the International Criminal Court issuing an indictment against Putin for war crimes.