MOSCOW, August 8. /TASS/. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom and former commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, overtook Vladimir Zelensky in the rating of trust among Ukrainians, conducted by the Ukrainian sociological group Rating.

Zaluzhny leads the rating with 68%, followed by Zelensky’s chief of staff Kirill Budanov with 62%. Zelensky is third.

Zaluzhny has long been viewed as Zelensky’s main political rival during the future elections, which is broadly seen as the most likely explanation for his dismissal and subsequent appointment to the post in London.

Budanov previously headed Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, but Zelensky appointed him as his chief of staff on January 2 in a move that Russian security sources described as an attempt to exclude him from the presidential race.

The phone interview was conducted among 1,000 responders from the Kiev-controlled part of Ukraine on August 5-6. The margin of error is estimated to be below 3.1%.

On August 3, Zaluzhny dismissed rumors of Ukraine's potential NATO accession as a "fairy tale," criticized the alliance, and acknowledged that it would take Kiev a very long time to reach Russia's level in military-industrial capacity. On the following day, Zaluzhny was not allowed to attend Zelensky’s meeting with British Secretary of State for Defense Wes Streeting, who had arrived in Kiev.