100 Days of Trump and 90% of Ukrainians

Nearly 90% of Ukrainians do not trust Donald Trump, who is now marking his first 100 days as President of the United States.

Each year, the New Europe Center commissions an opinion poll. As part of the tradition, we ask Ukrainians how much they trust various foreign leaders.

Although Trump had not yet been inaugurated at the time of the last opinion poll, the New Europe Center still asked respondents for their opinion about him. The result was fairly optimistic — last year, nearly half (44.6%) of Ukrainians expressed trust in the new American leader.

Some might have considered this level of trust too low. However, compared to other European countries, the Ukrainian assessment was actually quite high. A few months before our opinion poll, the Pew Research Center found that only 16% of people in France trusted Trump, 30% in the UK, and the highest support came from Hungary, at 37%.

This relatively high score in Ukraine was seen as a reflection of general disappointment with the hesitant policy of Joe Biden’s administration toward supporting Ukraine, as well as hopes for peace based on the promises made by the newly elected president.

Given Trump’s active peace efforts and the milestone of 100 days in office, the New Europe Center turned to its long-time partners at Info Sapiens to ask Ukrainians whether they trust the U.S. President now — as of mid-April 2025.

The result was unexpected:

Completely trust / rather trust: 7.4%

Rather not trust / completely not trust: 89%

For comparison, the results from November 2024:

Completely trust / rather trust: 44.6%

Rather not trust / completely not trust: 47.2%

The fact that the number of distrustful citizens has nearly doubled in such a short period (less than six months) sends a loud signal to a strategic partner: clearly, something needs to change in the approach… The Trump administration has already shown it is capable of listening to reasonable arguments and adjusting its policy. One such adjustment was the removal of the mandatory presidential election clause from the peace plan.

90% is too high a figure to ignore. It’s not just an emotional or irrational reaction. That 90% is a call to the United States to revise its approach to Ukraine — an approach that, at times, seemed more in line with Russia’s revanchist vision than with international law.

It is likely that this figure reflects not only disappointment with the failure to achieve quick peace, but also concern over the means by which the White House is pursuing its peacemaking goals. For example, Donald Trump considered it premature to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine. Meanwhile, as last year’s opinion poll showed, a majority of Ukrainians (64.1%) believed that negotiations with Russia should not take place without concrete security guarantees from the West. The reasoning: Russia would resume the war after a short pause.

Will Donald Trump hear the concerns of 90% of Ukrainians? Ukrainian society is very sensitive to changes in the approaches of foreign leaders — and it responds accordingly. In the New Europe Center’s trust rankings, some politicians have risen and others have fallen. Perhaps by the end of this year, we’ll see a 90% figure again — this time with a plus sign, as a show of trust in Trump. Ukrainian society has always expressed gratitude to leaders who demonstrate determination in supporting Ukraine.

You can find last year’s opinion poll by the New Europe Center at the following link: https://neweurope.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Annual-Opinion-Poll-Results_eng_print.pdf

The research was conducted by Info Sapiens LLC on behalf of the New Europe Center from April 10 to April 24, 2025. The sample consisted of 1,000 respondents. The opinion poll was conducted using the CATI method (computer-assisted telephone interviews) based on a random selection of mobile phone numbers. The sample is representative of the population of Ukraine aged 16 and over by gender, age, region, and size of settlement before the full-scale invasion, according to the latest data from the State Statistics Service of Ukraine as of 01.01.2022. The theoretical margin of error does not exceed 3.1% with a confidence level of 95%. The opinion poll did not cover the temporarily occupied territories of Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk and Luhansk regions, or other areas under occupation or lacking Ukrainian mobile network coverage.