A world of trouble is dawning for Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky. And not just because they are losing the war, which they are. Despite pro-Ukraine governments and media in Western countries overplaying Russia’s losses in troops and underplaying its gains in territory, the reality on the ground is becoming increasingly hopeless for the eastern European country.
Russia’s gains are not spectacular, but they are steady. They are slowly absorbing Donbas. The Russian advance is stretching the front line ever further. With Ukraine’s serious manpower shortage, that is making their defensive lines ever more porous and vulnerable.
The hopelessness on the battlefield is being increasingly felt by Ukrainians who were promised a victory that would make the war worth the suffering.
Ukraine will not recover its lost territories. Even Ukraine’s closest allies have conceded this point. At the end of April, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that when Ukraine finally signs a peace treaty with Russia, “it may be that part of Ukraine’s territory is no longer Ukrainian.”
The NATO dream is dead. And the EU dream is proving almost as illusive. Not only membership, but “membership light,” is a distant hope. While Ukraine talks of membership by next year, the EU talks about next decade. Merz recently stated that accession by 2027 “is out of the question. It’s not possible.” He has suggested that it cannot happen until 2035 at the earliest.
But the trouble isn’t just coming from outside the country, from a larger enemy’s significant advantages and from key allies’ diminishing confidence. It’s also coming from Zelensky’s government and the domestic political situation.
Ukrainians may be ready for a new leader. The sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko of Freie Universität Berlin told The American Conservative, “at this point, all the electoral polls are entirely speculative” and the more reliable polling is on who Ukrainians trust the most. Zelensky is not doing well by that metric.
Recent polling by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in January indicates that 72 percent of Ukrainians trust former Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhny and 70 percent trust former intelligence chief and current Zelensky chief of staff Kyrylo Budanov, while only 62 percent trust Zelensky—and the latter number has continued to fall. By April, Zelensky’s number was 58 percent. Only 28 percent of Ukrainians say they want to see Zelensky stay on as president after the war. According to some polling, only 20 percent of Ukrainians would vote for Zelensky in the next election, though that is still 1 point ahead of Zaluzhny, his closest competitor. Other polling suggests that Zelensky would lose to Zaluzhny. Ishchenko told TAC that some readings of “closed polls” show that he would probably lose to Budanov.
Zelensky has also been facing unfamiliar resistance from within his own party where a number of MPs are boycotting or rebelling. His super-majority is reportedly at risk as a result of defections.
An ongoing corruption scandal isn’t making life easier for Ukraine’s president. At the end of 2025, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), in cooperation with the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) charged multiple high-level people, including members of Zelensky’s inner circle, in a $100 million kickback scheme involving energy contracts. The scandal led to charges against a number of officials, the firing of some, and the resignation of Zelensky’s powerful chief of staff, Andriy Yermak.
The scandal news is growing worse. A just-released set of new tapes appears to show people who are very close to Zelensky, including the already suspected and wanted Timur Mindich, a close friend and former business associate of the president, swaying then-Defence Minister Rustem Umerov’s decisions on defense contracts. The tapes also appear to capture conversations about luxury estates that were financed by the corruption scheme, including one that is allegedly for Yermak.
On May 6, Mykola Hladyshchenko, a high ranking official of a state-owned bank at the centre of the corruption scandal, temporarily suspended himself after the new tapes implicated his bank in the scandal.
And it’s not only Ukraine’s government that is in danger: So is the Ukrainian nation. As Zelensky’s poll numbers plummet, so do Ukraine’s population numbers. A convergence of factors is shrinking Ukraine’s population to near extinction. Even before the war began in February 2022, there were signs of trouble, with Ukraine ranking eighth in the world for losing citizens to emigration. By 2023, the birth rate had dropped precipitously. A 2024 report by the CIA found that Ukraine had the lowest birth rate and the highest death rate in the world.
According to Florence Bauer, the Regional Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia for the UN Population Fund, Ukraine’s population has declined by over 10 million since the broader conflict began in 2014, with 8 million of those occurring since Russia’s invasion in 2022.
Ukraine now has the lowest life expectancy of any country in Europe. In many parts of Ukraine, there are at least four deaths for each birth. Ukraine was once the seventh-largest country in Europe with a prewar population of 46 million. It now has a population of between 26 million, if you exclude Russian controlled areas, and an optimistic 38 million. The UN projects a population of 16 million by 2050.
The American-Israeli war on Iran is making things even more hopeless, depleting stocks of weapons that Ukraine needs. And there is no new money coming for military aid in the current U.S defense budget. Militarily, politically and demographically, Ukraine’s prospects are dimming, despite what its Western cheerleaders may say.
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