Ukraine is “ready for elections“, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said, after US President Donald Trump repeated claims Kyiv was “using war” to avoid holding them.
Zelensky’s five-year term as president was due to end in May 2024, but elections have been suspended in Ukraine since martial law was declared after Russia’s invasion.
Speaking to reporters following Trump’s comments in a wide-ranging Politico interview, Zelensky said he would ask for proposals to be drawn up, which could change the law.
“Elections could be held in the next 60 to 90 days if security for the vote was guaranteed with the help of the US and other allies.
“I’m asking now, and I’m stating this openly, for the US to help me, perhaps together with our European colleagues, to ensure security for the elections.
“The issue of elections in Ukraine, I believe, depends first and foremost on our people, and this is a question for the people of Ukraine, not the people of other countries. With all due respect to our partners,” Zelensky said.
“I’ve heard hints that we’re clinging to power, or that I personally am clinging to the presidency,” and “that’s why the war isn’t ending”, which he called “frankly, a completely unreasonable narrative”.
Zelensky won the election in 2019 with more than 73% of the vote.
Russia has consistently claimed Zelensky is an illegitimate leader and demanded new elections as a condition of a ceasefire deal, a talking point which has been repeated by Trump.
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“They talk about a democracy, but it gets to a point where it’s not a democracy anymore,” the US president told Politico.
He has suggested without evidence that Zelensky is the main obstacle to peace as US-led efforts to broker a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine continue.
There are significant practical obstacles to a wartime election.
Soldiers serving on the frontlines could be either unable to vote or require leave to do so.
According to the UN, about 5.7 million Ukrainians are living abroad because of the conflict. And any ballot would require complex, additional security measures.
A vote would only be fair if all Ukrainians could participate, including soldiers fighting on the front line, a Ukrainian opposition MP told the BBC.
“For these elections to be fair, all of the people of Ukraine would need to be allowed to vote,” Lesia Vasylenko told the BBC World Service’s Newsday programme.
She said that “elections are never possible in wartime”, alluding to the suspension of elections in the UK during World War Two.
Discussions around holding elections have made headlines since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
There is little domestic political pressure on Zelensky to call elections while the conflict is ongoing, said Oleksandr Merezhko, the chairman of the foreign policy committee in Ukraine’s parliament.
