Freedom of expression during each president's tenure

Every president since 1991, ranked by how the freedom of expression changed from their first day in office. Politare shows what happened during a tenure; it does not claim the office-holder caused it.

#	President	In office	Total	Per year	Chart
1	N Viktor Yushchenko	23 Jan 2005 – 25 Feb 2010	+27.1 points 2004 → 2009	+5.4 points/yr
2	N Leonid Kravchuk	23 Jul 1990 – 19 Jul 1994 from 1991	+8.1 points 1991 → 1994	+2.7 points/yr
3	N Petro Poroshenko	7 Jun 2014 – 20 May 2019	+0.7 points 2013 → 2018	+0.1 points/yr
4	Viktor Yanukovych	25 Feb 2010 – 23 Feb 2014	−15.6 points 2009 → 2013	−3.9 points/yr
5	N Leonid Kuchma	19 Jul 1994 – 23 Jan 2005	−22.1 points 1994 → 2004	−2.2 points/yr
6	Volodymyr Zelenskyy	20 May 2019 – now	−28.8 points 2018 → 2025	−4.1 points/yr

Sorted by total, highest first. Every row is indexed to the last count complete before the first day in office ("from" marks a start that had to move because that count had no data, or because the period cut it); Levels are per cent changes, rates are differences in points; "per year" compounds levels and divides rates. Tenures with under 12 months, or under three observations, are left out. points, 0 to 100, V-Dem's 0 to 1 index times 100 · V-Dem Institute, V-Dem dataset v16 (v2x_freexp_altinf): the freedom of expression and alternative sources of information index, the press, academic and private speech and the media's independence, as V-Dem's country experts rate them, with V-Dem's confidence interval; the 0 to 1 index times 100 · Ukraine data · as of Sep 2026.