As the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion approaches, the chorus of voices calling for new elections in Ukraine is growing louder and louder. Curiously, however, these calls are coming not from the Ukrainians themselves, but from the Kremlin and the Trump White House.
Since his inauguration a month ago, US President Donald Trump has echoed Russia’s demands for new elections in Ukraine. This week, he sparked outrage by calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator without elections.” The attacks have proven popular in Moscow but have fallen flat in Kyiv, where most Ukrainians have rejected the US leader’s claims and rallied around Zelensky.
The debate over Ukraine’s elections reflects the difficult wartime realities of the partially occupied country. Ukraine was due to hold presidential and parliamentary elections in 2024, but was forced to postpone both rounds because Ukraine’s constitution does not allow for national elections during martial law, which was introduced in 2022 and remains in force. Zelensky has promised to hold the elections as soon as the security situation allows, but says it will be impossible to hold free and fair elections under current circumstances.
Most Ukrainians seem to agree. Zelensky’s two main political rivals, Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, have publicly rejected the idea of wartime elections as impractical and illegitimate. Ukraine’s vocal civil society has also spoken out against the return of elections before a peace deal is signed. Meanwhile, a new opinion poll conducted in February 2025 found that 63 percent of Ukrainians oppose holding any national elections until the war with Russia ends.
This lack of appetite for wartime elections is not the result of apathy or oppression. On the contrary, Ukrainians are fiercely proud of their country’s democratic credentials, which were hard-won during two separate pro-democracy revolutions in 2004 and 2014. In both cases, millions of Ukrainians took part in mass protest movements, opposing Russian-backed efforts to undermine the country’s nascent democracy and set Ukraine on a path toward Kremlin-style authoritarianism. This grassroots embrace of democratic values has become central to modern Ukraine’s sense of national identity.
For more than two decades, Ukraine’s nascent democratic culture has been a key factor in Moscow’s escalating aggression against the country. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s obsession with Ukraine can be traced back to the 2004 Orange Revolution, which was triggered in part by his botched meddling in Ukraine’s presidential election. It marked a turning point in relations between the two post-Soviet countries. Over the next two decades, Ukraine has sought a European democratic future, while Putin’s Russia has turned to its imperial past.
Putin’s fear of Ukrainian democracy is easy enough to understand. As a young KGB officer in East Germany, his formative political experience was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rapid collapse of the Soviet empire as a wave of democratic uprisings swept across Eastern Europe. Since the Orange Revolution, Putin has been haunted by the idea that an increasingly democratic Ukraine could serve as a catalyst for the next stage of Russia’s imperial retreat and trigger the breakup of the Russian Federation itself.
Moscow’s growing concern about the potential consequences of democratic progress in Ukraine was a major factor in Putin’s fateful decision to invade Ukraine in 2014. When the occupation of Crimea and the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine failed to prevent the consolidation of Ukrainian democracy or to derail the country’s Euro-Atlantic integration, Putin felt compelled to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Ukrainians are the first to admit that their country’s democracy is still a work in progress, suffering from a range of shortcomings, including deep-rooted institutional corruption and the outsized influence of oligarchs. Temporary wartime security measures targeting Kremlin-linked political parties and institutions, such as the Russian Orthodox Church, are also a cause for concern. At the same time, Ukrainians are keenly aware that their country’s recent history of internationally recognized elections and a growing democratic culture sets them apart from their Russian neighbors.
The fight for democracy has shaped Ukraine’s post-Soviet path, but the vast majority of Ukrainians do not support the idea of holding elections under current wartime conditions. This skepticism is understandable. More than ten million Ukrainians, representing about a quarter of the population, have been internally displaced by Russia’s invasion or forced to flee abroad as refugees. Millions more currently live under Russian occupation. Without their participation, any vote would have no legitimacy. Likewise, about a million Ukrainian men and women currently serve in the armed forces. Trying to provide them with safe voting conditions would be a logistical and security nightmare.
It is equally impossible to organize a credible election campaign. With the entire country under near-daily Russian bombing, large-scale campaign events and campaign rallies would be out of the question. It would be even more reckless to open thousands of polling stations on election day and invite Russian drone and missile attacks. Over the past three years, the Kremlin has repeatedly bombed Ukrainian civilians at train stations, funerals, and other public gatherings. There is no reason to believe that crowds on election day will not be targeted as well. Even if a ceasefire were in place well before the vote, the threat of renewed Russian airstrikes would hang over the entire campaign and deter public participation.
In addition to these practical obstacles, attempting to hold an election campaign before a peace deal is signed risks sowing divisions in Ukrainian society at a pivotal moment in the country’s history. Many believe this is the real reason for the Kremlin’s sudden and otherwise inexplicable enthusiasm for Ukrainian democracy. After all, Russia is the world leader in election meddling. Although Putin’s military has failed to defeat Ukraine on the battlefield, he may feel he can still achieve his goal of dividing and subjugating the country at the ballot box. At the very least, if Ukraine’s current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, fails to win re-election, it will remove a very visible obstacle to a peace deal in Russia’s favor.
Democracy is at the very heart of Ukraine’s current struggle for national survival and is destined to remain one of the core values in post-war Ukraine. However, most Ukrainians now recognize that any attempt to organize elections would be impractical and irresponsible in the extreme. For this reason, there is currently no call for elections in Ukrainian society. The current generation of Ukrainians has fought long and hard for their democratic rights, but they also recognize that the country must be at peace before credible elections can take place. It would be absurd to ignore their wishes and force premature elections on Ukraine as part of a Kremlin-friendly peace process.
Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council's UkraineAlert service.
Source: euractiv.com
