'I’m asking now, and stating this openly, for the U.S. to help me,' President Volodymyr Zelensky said.Kin Cheung/The Associated Press
After more than a year of insisting that it was impossible to hold an election in wartime, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared to reverse his position, declaring that a vote could be held within 60 to 90 days, as long as the United States provided security guarantees.
It’s a caveat few Ukrainians expect will come to pass. After U.S. President Donald Trump called this week for Ukraine to hold an election, Mr. Zelensky has put the onus back on Mr. Trump, who has effectively halted all U.S. aid to Ukraine since coming into office, and is very unlikely to deploy any kind of assurance force to the country now.
“What would that security guarantee be? Two thousand Tomahawk missiles? That would be a security guarantee – because in the absence of NATO membership, one is stumped to think of what that would be,” said Peter Zalmayev, director of the Kyiv-based Eurasia Democracy Initiative. “Trump has shown himself quite unwilling to say anything concrete on that score, so this is actually a pretty good move by Zelensky. It kind of puts the ball back in Trump’s court, in a way.”
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Mr. Zelensky’s partial about-face – more like returning a dare with a double-dare – came on Tuesday after Mr. Trump said in an interview with Politico that Ukraine should hold an election because “it gets to a point where it’s not a democracy any more.” Mr. Zelensky’s five-year term expired in 2024, but was extended under the terms of the martial law he declared in February, 2022, at the start of the Russian invasion.
“I’m asking now, and stating this openly, for the U.S. to help me. Together with our European partners, we can ensure the security needed to hold elections. If that happens, Ukraine will be ready to conduct elections in the next 60 to 90 days,” Mr. Zelensky said in a group chat with journalists. “I personally have the will and readiness for this.”
Oleksandr Merezhko, an MP from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party.Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
Speaking before Mr. Zelensky made his suggestion, Oleksandr Merezhko, an MP from Mr. Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, called the idea of holding a wartime election “absurd,” and said it would work in Russia’s favour by turning Ukrainians against each other.
“It is absolutely impossible to hold elections in a war. This is Putin’s idea, and he is using Trump,” Mr. Merezhko said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin boss, who has ruled Russia since the turn of the century while crushing all political opposition, has repeatedly suggested that he cannot negotiate peace with Mr. Zelensky because he is not the “legitimate” leader of Ukraine.
Mr. Zelensky’s critics were equally unimpressed with the idea of holding a snap vote. Oleksiy Goncharenko, an MP with the opposition European Solidarity party, said that with the country under martial law, which places much of the media under government control, it would take much longer than 60 days to establish the conditions for a free and fair campaign.
“Real elections are not just about going to some polling station and ticking some paper. It’s about campaigns, it’s about debates, none of which are possible right now.”
Mr. Goncharenko said the verbal jousting between Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Trump is distracting from the need for serious negotiations. The current peace process, launched on Nov. 19 when a 28-point plan was originally leaked, now seems destined for failure, with Russia insisting on territorial concessions from Ukraine that Mr. Zelensky says he is constitutionally barred from making.
Zelensky at his party's headquarters after a parliamentary election in Kyiv in 2019.Evgeniy Maloletka/The Associated Press
Three weeks of hectic negotiations – none of which involved face-to-face meetings between leaders – have created a situation where there are now at least three separate documents. There’s the original 28-point plan that the Kremlin has indicated could be a basis for negotiations, and a 20-point draft that Ukraine seems closer to accepting, but which Moscow has said would require major revisions. A third, European-backed plan has already been rejected by Russia.
Beyond territorial issues, other major points of disagreement are the language around whether Ukraine could one day join the NATO alliance, the size of Ukraine’s postwar army, how the reconstruction of Ukraine will be funded and whether there should be some kind of amnesty for those, potentially including Mr. Putin, accused of committing war crimes.
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As the talks have stumbled, Russian troops have continued to push forward in the southeastern Donbas region, which Mr. Putin claims to have annexed. Mr. Zelensky’s negotiating position has been further weakened by a US$100-million corruption scandal that forced the resignations of two cabinet ministers, as well as his powerful former chief of staff, Andriy Yermak.
Mr. Goncharenko said he was worried that Mr. Zelensky, sensing a political opportunity, was serious about holding a snap election – one that would give his rivals little time to organize – potentially winning a new term and putting the corruption scandal behind him.
A poll of 1,000 Ukrainians, conducted in November by Kyiv-based social research firm Info Sapiens, showed Mr. Zelensky would narrowly win the first round of a snap presidential election, with 20.3-per-cent support.
A worker walks in front of a production hall after a recent Russian missile attack at DTEK's power plant in Ukraine on Wednesday.Evgeniy Maloletka/The Associated Press
But that number was down four percentage points from October, before the corruption scandal erupted. Meanwhile, Mr. Zelensky’s most popular potential challenger, former top general Valery Zaluzhny, was up nearly three points to 19.1 per cent support, putting support for the two men within the poll’s 3.1-percentage-point margin of error. Placing third in the poll was Lieutenant-General Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the HUR military intelligence service, with 5.1-per-cent support, followed by former president Petro Poroshenko at 4.6 per cent.
If no candidate passes 50-per-cent support in the first round of a presidential election, a second-round runoff is held between the two top contenders.
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Neither Mr. Zaluzhny, who was fired as chief of the country’s general staff in early 2024 after repeatedly clashing with Mr. Zelensky’s office, nor Lt.-Gen. Budanov has publicly expressed interest in running for office.
A separate poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that only 22 per cent of Ukrainians supported holding an election in wartime, even if there was a ceasefire and security guarantees from the West. Nearly two-thirds said elections could only be held after the war was over.
A Ukrainian serviceman leaves a booth as a woman holds her ballot at a polling station during a parliamentary election in Kyiv in 2019.Zoya Shu/The Associated Press