The former comedian won respect abroad and drew comparisons with Winston Churchill when he stayed in Kyiv in February 2022 to steer his country against the Russian invasion.

A survey released today by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) showed that Ukrainians’s trust in their leader had fallen to 52% as of December last year, compared to 90% in March 2022, just weeks after Russia invaded.

Just 7% of respondents in March 2022 said they actively did not trust the 46-year-old leader.

That figure has since grown to 39%, the poll showed.

“The weakening of trust in Zelensky indeed reduces his future potential and weight as a public figure,” said the institute’s executive director, Anton Grushetsky, in an analytical note.

He said this also dealt a “critical blow” to the institution of the presidency.

“It is hardly worth explaining further what disasters can happen in the event of delegitimisation and collapse of the controllability of the institution of the president and the government in general,” he added.

Zelensky swept to victory in 2019, promising to end bitter fighting with Kremlin-backed separatists in the east of the country and stamp out systemic corruption among Soviet-style political elites.

His first five-year term officially ended last year.

But under martial law, Kyiv cannot host elections, which would anyway face myriad obstacles, with millions of Ukrainians abroad, living under Russian occupation or near active hostilities.

The Kremlin has repeatedly said since then that Zelensky is no longer the legitimate leader of Ukraine, a claim that has largely been ignored both by the West and Russia’s allies.

The fresh polling comes as Ukraine is losing ground in the war-battered east of the country and incoming US president Donald Trump has vowed to end the conflict in one day, without explaining how.