Article with only “AP’S ASSESSMENT”

Zelenskyy’s support at rock bottom?

WHAT TRUMP SAID: “The leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he’s down at 4% approval rating.”

AP’S ASSESSMENT: Zelenskyy “retains a fairly high level of public trust” — about 57 percent - according to a report released Wednesday by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. While exact figures of the number of deaths are unknown, Zelenskyy said earlier this month that over 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the start of the full-scale war in February 2022. He has also said that “tens of thousands of civilians” had been killed in occupied areas of Ukraine, but that no exact figures would be available until the war was over. The most recent data from the Russian Defense Ministry, published in January 2023, pointed to just over 6,000 military deaths, although reports from U.S. and U.K. officials put that number significantly higher.

Speaking in Kyiv on Wednesday, Zelenskyy said the number given by Trump, for which the president cited no sources, was “disinformation” that originated in Russia, and that the president “unfortunately lives in this disinformation space.”

Zelenskyy said he will ask pollsters in the coming weeks to conduct surveys on the public’s trust in him and share the results with the Trump administration.