We had no idea what ordinary Ukrainians thought of Donald Trump and his negotiating team when we sat down to come up with questions for a survey of the views of ordinary Ukrainians. But we knew, given how much the US President has dominated the ‘Russia-Ukraine war peace process,’ that it was a good question to ask. Posing it in direct and somewhat provocative terms was a choice but one appropriate to the wartime condition of Ukraine where life is very much a matter of friends and enemies.

Getting funds in the US to do research on Ukraine is now very difficult. Previously my collaborative work with colleagues secured funding from the National Science Foundation after a competitive award process. I had a large grant before the NSF in early 2025, on its third iteration and highly ranked, and then came the political interference and DOGE sabotage of that institution. The research project was dead.

I am fortunate to work at an institution that cares about research and tried to help its faculty. By skipping academic conferences this year I was able to combine a modest sum with that of colleagues at the University of Colorado, enough to fund one short CATI (computer-aided-telephone-survey) in Ukraine through the good services of KIIS (the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology). It was an average of 17 minutes long.

The first results from this survey have just been published today by The Conversation. The headline is the finding about Trump but there are lots of other interesting results, including Ukrainian views about developing nuclear weapons if they don’t get NATO membership. Stay tuned.