| If Russia had not invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Volodymyr Zelenskyy would have faced a re-election campaign in spring 2024. But after Vladimir Putin sent his troops across the border, the country quickly entered a state of martial law. That meant that both presidential and parliamentary elections were postponed. That is, clearly, not an ideal democratic situation. But it is hard to conceive of a more robust justification than the circumstances Ukraine has faced over the past three years – and many of the obstacles to elections that the war has erected will not instantly disappear when a ceasefire agreement is signed. Why hasn’t Ukraine held elections since the war began? Under Ukraine’s constitution, it is not legal to hold national elections during a period of martial law. This Foreign Policy article from 2023 outlines practical impediments that largely still hold today. The disruption from air raids has made organisation and vote counting impossible, as well as bringing obvious risks if large numbers have to congregate at polling stations. Voters in the eastern areas worst affected by the war – or occupied – would be disenfranchised against those living in the west. After mass internal displacement and many people leaving the country altogether, there is no system in place for absentee voting and no recent update to the national voter registry. And any resources spent on resolving these issues are taken away from the country’s defence. Even if a ceasefire is agreed, “there is a broad political consensus that there should not be elections earlier than six months after the lifting of martial law”, Orysia Lutsevych said. “And I suspect that martial law will not be lifted quickly if a ceasefire is signed, because of fears that the Russians could break it at any time.” Is Zelenskyy unpopular? Donald Trump’s claim that Zelenskyy has a 4% approval rating appears to have been conjured from thin air: the only suggestion of any source for that figure comes from Russian media outlets citing a “poll” conducted by Zelenskyy critic Oleksandr Dubinsky among his (deeply unrepresentative) Telegram followers. Wherever he plucked it from, the number doesn’t align at all with the credible available evidence. Zelenskyy himself suggested yesterday that the 4% figure was “disinformation, we understand it’s coming from Russia”. It is true that Zelenskyy’s ratings are a bit lower than they were at the very peak of his popularity, in the early months of the war, when some polls put him at 90% (against a low of 25% prewar). But that would be entirely unsurprising to anyone who has tracked the popularity of leaders in periods of crisis in the past, and is consistent with, for example, George W Bush after 9/11, who went on to win a second term. The most recent available poll shows Zelenskyy at 57% – still an extremely high approval rating when set against his peers across Europe, and certainly higher than Trump’s. “Very few leaders have as much support as Zelenskyy,” Lutsevych said. “There is no sign of that support collapsing. It seemed pretty clear at his press conference yesterday that he was confident about this, and confident that he has the support of the public and the parliament.” None of this is to say that Zelenskyy is a nailed-on winner as and when an election is called – but we might also note that if he was truly only interested in his own political survival, he might have tried to go ahead with the scheduled election at the height of his popularity. “Even now, he will believe that he can run on the basis of being Ukraine’s defender and have an excellent chance,” Lutsevych said. Why do Russia and the US want elections as a matter of urgency? There is little reason to think that Moscow has any interest in Ukraine other than instability and the dilution of national unity behind the war effort. “They will only agree to a ceasefire if they are able to continue war by other means,” Lutsevych said. “They want a divided society, and they are skilled at this kind of interference. They would prefer not to have Zelenskyy there because he is trusted in Europe, and anyone who replaces him would be starting from scratch.” In the past – before Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the Donbas in 2014 – there was a sizeable pro-Russian constituency in Ukrainian politics. But that has largely gone away now, and indeed several pro-Russian parties have been banned. Even those who would remain in that constituency largely live in areas that would likely be under Russian control in any ceasefire, and therefore unable to vote. There is little prospect of a government sympathetic to Moscow taking charge in the foreseeable future. At the same time, Lutsevych said, candidates might emerge who are preferable to Russian interests. “You can imagine a ‘pro-peace, pro-normalisation’ candidate,” Lutsevych said. “They would likely be someone very well separated from the old pro-Russian parties, and they could hijack the discourse. It’s not obvious who that is at the moment, but it’s possible.” Of course, when Ukraine gets back to something like a non-emergency state, they will have every right to take their chances alongside other candidates. Trump, that reliable supporter of [checks notes] respecting democratic norms, was careful to say that his position was “not a Russian thing” and that other countries agreed. It is hard to identify any country saying it other than Russia, though, and certainly not calling Zelenskyy a dictator. “Trump appears to trust Putin,” Lutsevych said. “He is not really interested in internal Ukrainian politics: he wants to establish geopolitical cooperation with Moscow so that he can move on to other strategic objectives, and he’s ready to remove any obstacle to do that.” What do Ukrainians think? The question of whether Ukrainians are demanding fresh elections is separate to the question of Zelenskyy’s popularity – but on this, too, there is little evidence of any mood of public outrage. Polls throughout the war have found comfortable majorities supporting the idea that elections should not be held until martial law comes to an end. Trump’s intervention is unlikely to change that fact. “If anything it will probably create the opposite result,” Lutsevych said. “And people are comfortable that they are still living in a democracy. “The proof of that is that even under war conditions there are political debates, and people who criticise Zelenskyy publicly. There is independent media, local self-governance, and the right to freedom of assembly. People rally on issues from funding for the armed forces to calling for more information about prisoners of war.” All of that obviously stands in stark contrast to the repressive system in place in Russia. What would a new election look like? When the time comes, Zelenskyy may face credible opposition from someone like Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the four-star general who is now ambassador to the UK. He enjoys high approval ratings of his own, and was sacked after a widely publicised rift with his boss, complaining about “the inability of state institutions in Ukraine to improve the manpower levels of our armed forces”. There will be huge challenges to the emergence of something like normal democracy in Ukraine, though. “There are big questions about how the pro-democratic opposition to Zelenskyy organises itself – they don’t have the infrastructure of party activists and resources,” Lutsevych said. “Whatever happens, it is likely that veterans of the war will be prominent in politics and shape the agenda. There are lots of problems with how you rebuild Ukraine and guarantee its future security.” Biting though all of those issues are, they do not suggest that Zelenskyy is anything like a dictator. | 