41% of Ukrainians believe that country is moving towards authoritarianism, while 50% believe it is moving towards democracy, - poll by KIIS. INFOGRAPHICS
According to the results of a survey on whether Ukraine is moving towards authoritarianism or democracy, Ukrainians' opinions are divided, with 50% believing that the country is moving towards the development of democracy, while 41% feel that the country is moving towards authoritarianism.
This is stated in the results of a survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) conducted on 2 May - 3 June 2025, as reported by Censor.NET.
As noted, another 9% of Ukrainians answered "difficult to say" to the question "Is Ukraine moving towards the development of democracy and greater democratisation or towards a reduction in democracy and the development of authoritarianism?"
In your opinion, is Ukraine moving forward in its development...?
Sociologists noted that they do not have data for other periods (in particular, before 2022) and cannot say whether more / fewer people now see a movement towards democracy / authoritarianism than before. However, based on their observations and experience, it is unlikely that fewer people talked about the movement towards authoritarianism in the past (in particular, due to the correlation with attitudes towards the authorities).
"Most likely, the situation was either similar to the current one or even worse (given the correlation of this view with attitudes towards the authorities)," added the KIIS.
The KIIS has also provided data on how those who do not trust / trust President Volodymyr Zelenskyy assess the country's development.
Among those who do not trust the president, the vast majority (82% of those who do not trust him at all and 84% of those who tend not to trust him) believe that the country is moving towards authoritarianism.
At the same time, those who trust the president are more optimistic about the development of the situation, but there are differences among them. Among those who completely trust the president, 76% say the country is moving towards greater democracy and only 7% see the development of authoritarianism. At the same time, among those who tend to trust the president, 50% see a move towards democracy, while 41% see a move towards authoritarianism.
Ukraine is moving towards greater democracy/development of authoritarianism in terms of trust in the president
"These results suggest that the perception of a shift towards authoritarianism largely reflects dissatisfaction with the actions of the authorities. In other words, a respondent's answer about the 'development of authoritarianism' does not always mean that they see a decline in democracy," noted the KIIS.
KIIS conducted its own nationwide public opinion poll, "Omnibus", between 28 May and 3 June 2025, to which, on its own initiative, it added a question about the direction of Ukraine's movement – towards the development of democracy or towards the development of authoritarianism. Using computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI) based on a random sample of mobile phone numbers (with random generation of phone numbers and subsequent statistical weighting), 1,092 respondents were surveyed in all regions of Ukraine (territory controlled by the Government of Ukraine). The survey was conducted among adult (aged 18 and older) citizens of Ukraine who, at the time of the survey, were residing in the territory of Ukraine controlled by the Ukrainian government. The sample did not include residents of territories temporarily not controlled by the Ukrainian government (at the same time, some of the respondents were IDPs who had moved from the occupied territories), and the survey was not conducted with citizens who had left the country after 24 February 2022.
Formally, under normal circumstances, the statistical error of such a sample (with a probability of 0.95 and taking into account the design effect of 1.3) did not exceed 3.9% for indicators close to 50%, 3.4% for indicators close to 25%, 2.4% for indicators close to 10%, and 1.7% for indicators close to 5%.
