An absolute majority of Ukrainians believe their country will win the war, according to the latest monitoring by the Institute of Sociology at the National Academy of Sciences.
The research, conducted from 9 September through 8 October, measured shifts in public opinion as the conflict with Russia entered its fourth year.
Fully 40.9% of respondents reported complete confidence in victory, while another 34% leaned toward confidence, according to the institute. Together, these figures represent 74.9% of the population expressing some degree of belief in Ukrainian victory. By contrast, just 6.1% said they held no confidence at all, with an additional 12.6% somewhat skeptical.
The September 2025 findings align closely with earlier polling. The Democratic Initiatives Foundation and Razumkov Centre reported 73% of respondents believing in victory in August, while the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found 62% of Ukrainians prepared to endure war as long as necessary to achieve victory.
Yet this confidence coexists with a strikingly different assessment of Ukraine's current situation. When asked about present warfighting capabilities, respondents offered a mixed to pessimistic evaluation.
The capacity question: A nation sees itself as under-resourced
Just 7.2% of respondents rated Ukraine's warfighting abilities as generally good, according to the Institute of Sociology's data. An additional 39.5% called them satisfactory. However, 41.6% rated current warfighting capabilities as generally poor, while 11.7% said they could not form a judgment.
The distribution reveals a population skeptical of its nation's military position despite maintaining belief in ultimate victory. Nearly four times as many respondents viewed warfighting capacity as poor compared to those viewing it as good.
This assessment appeared to grow more critical over time. In December 2022, at an earlier stage of the war, more detailed scoring showed substantially different views: 1.2% rated capacity at the highest level (10), while 31% rated it at the lowest (0). By September 2025, no respondents rated capacity at 10, while 2.7% assigned the lowest score—suggesting a rebalancing of views rather than uniform pessimism.
International support: From dire to merely adequate
Evaluations of international assistance to Ukraine showed marked improvement compared to earlier assessments. The institute measured support on a scale from 0 (very poor) to 10 (very good).
In September 2025, 25.4% of respondents rated international support as very good, while 54.7% called it satisfactory. Only 20% rated it very poor, reports the Institute of Sociology. This represents a substantial shift from December 2022, when 64.8% rated support very poorly and just 3.3% called it very good.
The June 2024 data point fell between these extremes: 32% called support very poor, 48.9% satisfactory, and 32.8% very good.
The trajectory suggests that while international assistance may not have increased substantially, Ukrainian perceptions of its adequacy shifted during the period studied. The decline in those rating support as "very poor" fell from 64.8 percent to 20 percent over 2.75 years of tracking.
Endurance and sacrifice: Public commitment holds
The research found that 69% of respondents remained ready to endure present and future hardships as long as necessary to achieve victory, according to the Institute of Sociology. Another 23.9% said they would tolerate difficulties for a limited time. Just 4.6% reported unwillingness to continue sacrifice.
This represented a significant increase in commitment compared to December 2022, when 47.1% expressed willingness to endure war indefinitely, 32.5% imposed time limits on their tolerance, and 16.2% rejected further sacrifice.
The data suggests that three years into the war, Ukrainian society had actually consolidated behind the war effort rather than fracturing from fatigue. Over 100 percentage points separated the "indefinite sacrifice" cohort from the "no more sacrifice" group in September 2025—a gap that showed consistent public backing for continuing resistance.
The survey included 1,835 respondents representing Ukraine's adult population, excluding Crimea and occupied territories in the south and east.
The survey respondents had a mean age of 49.2 years, were 44.7% male and 55.3% female, and represented a range of education levels and settlement types across Ukraine.