Ex-defence minister’s call for a wartime election puts pressure on Ukraine’s Zelenskyy

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is under renewed pressure to hold wartime elections, even though under the country’s constitution they are not allowed while martial law is in effect.

Zelenskyy, who was elected to power in 2019, is facing a call to hold elections from Mykhailo Fedorov, the young, popular former defence minister who was recently dismissed from his role in government.

Without stipulating a timeline, Fedorov says Ukraine must find “a legal, safe and realistic mechanism that will allow Ukraine to renew its full democratic process even in the conditions of a long war.”

Some observers say elections are not feasible at this moment, as the country continues to fight an all-out war with Russia that started in February 2022.

But the political considerations of the calls for change may be something that Zelenskyy cannot necessarily ignore, whether elections are on the immediate horizon or not.

WATCH | Fedorov was once a staunch ally of Zelenskyy:

Zelenskyy faces election call from the popular defence minister he fired

In what many see as Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelenskyy’s biggest challenge since the 2022 Russian invasion, ousted defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov has publicly called for a wartime presidential election. Federov’s firing last month triggered protests across Ukraine.

Tymofiy Mylovanov, a former Ukrainian government minister, said Wednesday in a post on X that Fedorov had made the prospect of elections “a vibrant domestic political question,” but had not moved forward the likelihood they would occur soon.

He predicted that Zelenskyy, if pressed enough by continued protests, could announce how Ukraine could stage a vote down the road, whether “after the war or under wartime conditions.”

A popular figure

Prior to his dismissal, the 35-year-old Fedorov was publicly seen as a reformer and tech-savvy member of Zelenskyy’s government.

Born in 1991 — the year that Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union — Fedorov had previously served as Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation and been a vocal proponent of the use of drone warfare in the fight against Russia.

Fedorov was named defence minister in January. He was ousted from that role in July in a move that prompted a wave of protests in Ukraine, with calls for Zelenskyy to reverse the decision.

Fedorov said he declined offers to take a different position in the government and that he would not accept any position other than the defence job.

But Zelenskyy did not relent, naming Yevhenii Khmara to the defence role. The appointment was formalized by Ukrainian lawmakers on Wednesday.

Can elections truly be held?

Some question whether elections can truly be held at the moment, given the challenges the war with Russia poses.

That’s the view of Dmytro Koziatynskyi, a veteran combat medic who had called for the original protests to reinstate ​Fedorov in July.

“I cannot imagine how to technically provide the possibility of a vote to thousands of service personnel currently serving at the front,” he wrote on X, in a post in which he wished Khmara success and indicated that the protest is now over.

Lesia Bidochko, a policy fellow at the European Policy Institute in Kyiv, likewise does not see any realistic procedure for organizing a vote, with millions of Ukrainians living as refugees overseas, displaced within the country, and serving in the military.

She believes Fedorov has veered into “the populist trajectory” in calling for elections.

“Currently, it looks like an elegant ‌way of occupying the opposition space without taking responsibility for the mechanics,” she said of Fedorov.

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Ukrainian lawmaker Lesia Vasylenko says “it’s unrealistic” to talk about an election at the moment.

“It would require a constitutional change,” she told Times Radio, something that is a “difficult enough process to orchestrate at peace time and during the martial law regime, it’s virtually impossible.”

Zelenskyy has yet to respond directly to Fedorov’s call, but the president’s ​communications adviser Dmytro Lytvyn told reporters that “Russia’s daily drone and missile strikes are the exhaustive answer to this question.”

Orysia Lutsevych, the head of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House, called any push to hold wartime elections “a very high-risk bet” that could erode national unity and potentially be exploited by Moscow.

“It will open up a gateway of interference by Russia to wage war by other means,” she told Germany’s Deutsche Welle broadcaster.

Russia has said Zelenskyy is illegitimate because his term ran out in May 2024 and so cannot sign peace deals on Ukraine’s behalf. U.S. President Donald Trump criticized the lack of elections in an interview with Politico in December, saying it was time for a vote.