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Holding a wartime election in Ukraine while active fighting with Russia continues would “destroy” the country by splitting Ukrainians, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
His comments, released to reporters on Sunday, were Zelenskyy’s first on the subject since ousted former defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov called for a wartime poll, in a bombshell address last week.
Fedorov’s surprise dismissal last month sparked widespread protests, but supporters calling for his reinstatement later balked at his call for an election — the first such demand by a major Ukrainian political figure since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.
“I believe that if we want to destroy the country, then we can move toward elections during this kind of war,” Zelenskyy said.
Elections in war are prohibited by Ukrainian law. Analysts also say security concerns and the millions of Ukrainians abroad, under Russian occupation or fighting at the front, mean it would be too difficult to hold an election.
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.
Elections ‘will split Ukraine,’ Zelenskyy says
Zelenskyy’s approval rating has remained generally stable at about 60 per cent, but pollsters have said that while Ukrainians want fresh faces in politics, many have little appetite for voting now.
An Aug. 5 poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that 57 per cent of Ukrainians want elections only after fighting ends.
Echoing his previous comments on the matter, Zelenskyy said a wartime election might be possible if Kyiv’s partners could guarantee security, but that no one has proposed such a plan.
“Elections right now are a tsunami for the state, which will split Ukraine,” he said.
“That’s why my strategy is to steer the country toward an ending of the war and to preserve an independent and sovereign state.”
Zelenskyy also detailed the rift with his former defence minister, saying he maintains “a very positive attitude” toward Fedorov, a longtime ally who has been seen as the Ukrainian president’s top political challenger.
“We have been through a lot together. But I believe that he himself goes, or is pushed, into the wrong things,” Zelenskyy said.
Fedorov did not explicitly say whether he would stand in any future election.
A popular minister credited with modernizing Ukraine’s armed forces and accelerating the military’s embrace of technology and drone warfare, Fedorov was dismissed last month after reportedly falling out with the country’s top military commander.
Ukraine hammered targets in Russia on Saturday, including Moscow, with hundreds of drones in one of its biggest attacks of the war so far, demonstrating its increasing ability to match Russia in long-range strikes.
Inaccurate information led to awkward Trump exchange
In his wide-ranging comments on Sunday, Zelenskyy said he had offered Fedorov four different options to continue working in government. Fedorov, he said, rejected all four proposals.
Zelenskyy also alluded to problematic decisions over defence spending and said inaccurate information provided by the Defence Ministry contributed to an awkward encounter with U.S. President Donald Trump over the use of Starlink in Russia.
The Ukrainian president said that earlier this year, the ministry had told him that SpaceX had agreed to allow Ukraine to use Starlink over Russian territory to carry out deep strike operations, subject to political approval.
Acting on that, Zelenskyy said, he raised the issue directly with Trump, telling the U.S. president that Musk had confirmed the proposed use. Zelenskyy said the two sides subsequently sought Musk’s confirmation and discussed financing for the project.
But at a later meeting, Zelenskyy said Trump told him that Musk had rejected the proposal and accused him of having misled the U.S. president. Musk considered the move a dangerous escalation, according to Zelenskyy.
“He said that I had supposedly deceived him because Musk had denied Ukraine the use of Starlink on Russian territory. I went back to our Ministry of Defence and they said that maybe it was so,” he said.
Zelenskyy did not explicitly accuse Fedorov of lying, but he said the episode was among the reasons behind “some of the steps.”
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