This is Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy’s biggest domestic challenge yet. However, it is highly likely that virtually no results will be achieved.
The rejection of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov’s call for wartime presidential elections goes to the heart of President Zelenskiy’s weaknesses. His declining popularity, overturning key personnel decisions and involvement in corruption allegations have taken a toll on his poll ratings. An investigation into senior Zelenskiy government officials was announced on Wednesday. Also, six uninterrupted years of wartime presidents are bound to make many unpopular decisions.
The youthful face of the reformer – the technological wizard Fyodorov, the expelled former Minister of Defense for trying to fight the arcane and corrupt ways of the Old Guard – is now demanding something pure and democratic: the vote. “We cannot allow our democracy to be held hostage by Russia. We are fighting precisely because we want to remain a free European nation,” he said in a remarkable nine-minute speech, delivered shortly after the confirmation of a new defense minister, who would return to the job he had wanted rather than him. But like many things in wartime, things are not that simple.
In fact, voting is almost impossible. Most election experts agree that it would take six months in normal times for Ukraine to implement legal reforms and implement technology to conduct voting that meets European standards. However, there is no prospect of a ceasefire or an end to the fighting. Holding onto incomplete votes, or holding onto votes that feed into the narrative that the winner is fraudulent, would be a huge gift to Moscow. Blinded by Russia’s own gradual electoral process, the Kremlin has repeatedly promoted the idea that the martial law ban on Ukraine’s wartime elections meant that Mr. Zelenskiy was illegitimate.
The vote could completely paralyze Kiev. The losing side could delay legislative reform and undermine the presidency at every turn. That would mean defeat from within.
Fedorov gained fame as a genius innovator. Could similar skills transform the electoral process and enable remote voting during wartime? Perhaps. But even a digital vote that could somehow involve all front-line troops – and let us remember that there are thousands of Ukrainians missing in action and whose status remains unresolved – would require mechanisms to ensure the exclusion of millions of Ukrainian pensioners living offline.
What do you say to Ukrainians living in the occupied territories or to the millions of people living as refugees abroad? How can we physically conduct a watertight vote at dozens of consulates in Europe and beyond? Will front-line soldiers, holed up in dugouts with poor communications, have enough time to consider their options and submit their votes? Or are they too busy defending their homeland?
It would be a complete mess. Any polls conducted during wartime would likely be a gift to Russia and the war of disinformation and chaos it is waging around the election. Europe will be left with the result of an election that either backed Zelenskiy in haste or failed and passed the incomplete baton to someone else.
According to the poll, the likely winner is either former military commander Valery Zaryuzhny or Fedorov himself. Both are likely to continue moving Ukraine in a similar direction. However, both would involve a purge of advisers close to Mr. Zelenskiy. Many of Zelensky’s critics believe he is responsible for bad decisions and that there are hints of corruption. (A quick reminder: Corruption is the unfortunate companion of every war waged).
So what does Fedorov’s phone call mean? A new pillar has now emerged in Ukrainian politics. They are young, experienced in power and reform, and are constantly trying to remind Ukraine that the president is straying from his original electoral mandate. This position is easy to take because it is supported by facts and takes advantage of growing discontent with the war. As forced mobilization increases to fill Ukraine’s declining ranks, anger toward the presidency and the military will also increase.
Fedorov’s call also highlights important questions that no one can answer. If you can’t vote during a war, when will it end? A terrifying winter awaits, and Russia’s superiority in ballistic missiles is likely to further exploit Ukraine’s lack of Patriot interceptor missiles. Russia is slowly moving towards its territorial goal of occupying the Donbas by rendering the remaining land held by Ukraine uninhabitable through horrific drone attacks on every vestige of civilian and military life.
The coming winter crisis will add fuel to the lackluster and blind peace process that President Trump’s White House is trying to rekindle. It will likely demand territorial concessions from Zelenskiy, anything to stop the fighting. He made it clear in an interview with me just recently that what Ukraine wants is security guarantees and to know that any ceasefire will be permanent. He ruled out the possibility of giving away the land. He is clearly aware that the coming winter will be tough, both in the skies and on the front lines.
As for his personal future, he seemed stunned when I suggested that the political machinations in Kiev, the corruption allegations surrounding his former aides and the deceptions of wartime politics, might keep him in the job after the war, if only to prevent wartime critics from haunting his team. He looked astonished and chuckled as if I had lost my mind, and all he said was seeing the beach with his children once the war was over. He didn’t seem like a man who would forever crave power. In fact, the opposite is true.
But there is no correct mechanism for Zelenskiy to be replaced by a truly popular successor unless he resigns and leaves his place to the Speaker of the Duma (a very bad idea from a voter mandate perspective). The net effect of Fedorov’s appeal to all his better angels is that Zelensky is weakened, questions about the legitimacy of his election are amplified, and calls for an end to the war are strengthened. Moscow will seize control of the conflict, and surely Trump will – the moment the pendulum swings and Ukraine suddenly becomes the bad guy – call Zelenskiy a “dictator” again. (He isn’t).
Mr. Fedorov’s call comes from the goodwill of ensuring that the war does not destroy Ukraine’s democratic values. But that ignores how far Ukraine remained towards European norms before the war, and the handicap the conflict imposed on these vital processes under nightly Russian bombardment. Wars cannot be fought on ideology alone – that is the truism, as Zelenskiy put it, that probably led to the former defense minister’s resignation after months of clashes and refusal to deal with the military’s top brass.
Ukraine is currently adding debate over whether its wartime president remains legitimate to a long list of challenges, including a manpower crisis, interceptors, a possible mobilization of more Russian troops, and a harsh winter. Fedorov is right that ideals should not die in war, or why else should we fight? But on the contrary, Ukrainians should not die in wars simply because their leadership is weakened by the pursuit of unattainable values.
