Over four years have passed since Russia initiated its full-scale assault on Ukraine, leading to devastating losses and countless lives lost. Amidst this crisis, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is now confronted with a significant political dilemma: the decision of whether to conduct elections during wartime.
This debate surfaced last week when former defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov, following his dismissal, urged Zelenskyy to consider the possibility of organizing elections amidst the ongoing conflict.
This proposal poses the most formidable challenge to Zelenskyy’s presidency since Russia’s invasion commenced in February 2022, as he continues to resist the pressure to hold elections under such precarious conditions.
“Elections at this moment would be akin to a tsunami striking our country, causing a split within Ukraine,” Zelenskyy remarked on Sunday, local time.
“Thus, my priority is steering the nation towards concluding the war, while ensuring the maintenance of our independence and sovereignty.”
National elections have been suspended since the invasion began and polling shows most Ukrainians support delaying a vote until the fighting ends.
Why can’t Ukraine hold elections?
Zelenskyy won Ukraine’s 2019 presidential election in a landslide and would have ordinarily served a five-year term.
After Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukraine introduced martial law, which suspends some civil liberties, including national elections.
Zelenskyy’s presidential term expired in 2024, but he remained in office as Ukraine’s constitutional and legal system provides for continuity of government during martial law. The country’s parliament has also continued operating.
Security remains the biggest obstacle to holding elections.
Fighting continues along a front line stretching more than 1,200km, while Ukrainian cities, including the capital Kyiv, remain under regular bombardment from Russian drones and missiles.
An election would potentially require millions of Ukrainians to travel to polling stations, creating security risks and raising concerns about how voting could be conducted safely.
Political parties would also need to campaign while the country remained under attack, while authorities would have to find a way for hundreds of thousands of soldiers serving on the front line to vote.
As of the end of June, more than 4.4 million Ukrainians had temporary protection status in the European Union, meaning Ukraine would have to organise hundreds of polling stations across Europe.
Nearly four million Ukrainians have also been internally displaced, making voter registration more difficult and potentially diverting resources from the war effort.
Then there are those living under Russian occupation unable to vote. Ukrainian officials estimated that, as of 2024, around 4.5 million adult Ukrainians remained in Russian-occupied territory.
Russia controls about 19 per cent of the Ukrainian territory and plans to hold its own elections there next month, which Ukraine has said would be illegal.
Zelenskyy has previously said a wartime vote might be possible if Ukraine’s allies could guarantee the security needed to hold one but no viable plan has been proposed.
Why has this become an issue now?
The question of wartime elections in Ukraine is not new.
US President Donald Trump last year called Zelenskyy a “dictator without elections”, while Russia has repeatedly used the expiry of his presidential term to paint him as an illegitimate leader.
But polls have consistently shown that a majority of Ukrainians oppose holding elections until fighting ends.
Last week, Fedorov, 35, made a shock public call for Ukraine to find a way to hold elections while at war.
“A legal, safe and realistic mechanism that will allow Ukraine to renew its full democratic process even in the conditions of a long war,” he said.
The intervention comes amid a broader political crisis for Zelenskyy, who fired the young, popular Fedorov as defence minister last month.
Fedorov became a popular figure as a backer of Ukraine’s drone warfare strategy and for arguing for reforms within the military.
Thousands took to the streets to demand his reinstatement. Zelenskyy has offered other roles to Fedorov, but he has so far refused.
Fedorov, a former political ally, did not explicitly state that he wanted to challenge Zelenskyy but he is now seen as a political rival to the president after his ousting.
Ukrainian politician Lesia Vasylenko said it was “unrealistic” to talk about an election while fighting continued.
“It would require a constitutional change,” she told Times Radio, something that is a “difficult enough process to orchestrate at peacetime and during the martial law regime, it’s virtually impossible”.
For now, there is little sign that Ukraine is preparing to hold an election, but the longer the war drags on, the louder the calls will become.
— With additional reporting by Agence France-Presse