Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was shut out of the discussions regarding the way forward for his nation, which occurred in Saudi Arabia on Feb. 18, 2025. In truth, there have been no Ukrainian representatives, nor any European Union ones – simply U.S. and Russian delegations, and their Saudi hosts.
The assembly – which adopted a mutually complimentary telephone name between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian chief Vladimir Putin simply days earlier – was gleefully celebrated in Moscow. The absence of Ukraine in deciding its personal future may be very a lot in step with Putin’s coverage towards its neighbor. Putin has lengthy rejected Ukrainian statehood and the legitimacy of the Ukrainian authorities, or as he calls it the “Kyiv regime.”
Whereas the U.S. delegation did reiterate that future discussions must contain Ukraine at some stage, the Trump administration’s actions and phrases have little question undermined Kyiv’s place and affect.
To that finish, the U.S. is more and more falling in step with Moscow on a key plank of the Kremlin’s plan to delegitimize Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian authorities: calling for elections in Ukraine as a part of any peace deal.
Questioning Zelenskyy’s legitimacy
Difficult Zelenskyy’s legitimacy is a part of a deliberate ongoing propaganda marketing campaign by Russia to discredit Ukrainian management, weaken assist for Ukraine from its key allies and take away Zelenskyy – and probably Ukraine – as a companion in negotiations.
Claims by the Russian president that his nation is prepared for peace negotiations seem, to many observers of its three-year battle, extremely suspect given Russia’s ongoing assaults on its neighbor and its steadfast refusal so far to conform to any short-term truce.
But the Kremlin is pushing the narrative that the issue is that there is no such thing as a reliable Ukrainian authority with which it may possibly deal. As such, Putin can proclaim his commitments to a peace with out making any commitments or compromises essential to any true negotiation course of.
In the meantime, portray Zelenskyy as a “dictator” dampens the enthusiastic assist that when greeted him from democratic nations. This, is flip, can translate to the discount and even finish of army assist for Kyiv, Putin hopes, permitting him a fillip in what has develop into a battle of attrition.
What Putin wants for this plan to work is a keen companion to assist get the message out that Zelenskyy and the present Ukraine authorities should not reliable representatives of their nation – and into this hole the brand new U.S. administration seems to have stepped.
Then-candidate Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a polling station throughout Ukraine’s presidential election in Kiev on March 31, 2019.
Genya Savilov/AFP by way of Getty Photos)
Dictating phrases
Take the narrative on elections.
On the assembly in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. reportedly mentioned elections in Ukraine as being a key a part of any peace deal. Trump himself has raised the prospect of elections, noting in a Feb. 18 press convention: “We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law.” The U.S. president went on to say, incorrectly, that Zelenskyy’s approval ranking was all the way down to “4%.” The newest polling truly reveals the Ukrainian president to be sitting on a 57% approval ranking.
A day later, Trump upped the assaults, describing Zelenskyy as a “dictator without elections.”
Such statements echo Russia’s narrative that the federal government in Kyiv is illegitimate.
The Kremlin’s claims concerning what it describes because the “legal aspects related to his [Zelenskyy’s] legitimacy” are based mostly on the premise that the Ukraine president’s five-year time period as president of Ukraine ought to have resulted in 2024.
And elections in Ukraine would have taken place in Might of that 12 months had it not been for the martial regulation that Ukraine put into place when the Russian Federation launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The Martial Regulation Act – which Ukraine imposed on Feb. 24, 2022 – explicitly bans all elections in Ukraine during the emergency motion.
And whereas the Ukrainian Structure solely consists of language concerning the extension of parliament’s powers till martial regulation is lifted, constitutional attorneys in Ukraine are inclined to agree that the implication is that this additionally applies to presidential powers.
However what the regulation says, the Kremlin’s questioning of the democratic establishments of Ukraine and its push for elections in Ukraine have discovered traction in Washington of late. Trump’s particular envoy Gen. Keith Kellogg declared on Feb. 1 that elections “need to be done” as a part of peace course of, saying that elections are a “beauty of a solid democracy.”
The poll field lure
Zelenskyy just isn’t against elections in precept and has agreed that elections needs to be held when the time is true. “Once martial law is over, then the ball is in parliament’s court – the parliament then picks a date for elections,” Zelenskyy said in a Jan. 2 interview.
And he seems to have the backing of the vast majority of Ukrainians. In Might 2024, 69% of Ukrainians polled mentioned Zelenskyy ought to stay president till the tip of marshal regulation, after which elections needs to be held.
The problem, as Zelenskyy has mentioned, is the timing and circumstances. “During the war, there can be no elections. It’s necessary to change legislation, the constitution, and so on. These are significant challenges. But there are also nonlegal, very human challenges,” he mentioned on Jan. 4.
Even opposition politicians in Ukraine agree that now just isn’t the time. Petro Poroshenko, Zelenskyy’s important political rival, has dismissed the thought of wartime elections, as has Inna Sovsun, the chief of the opposition Golos Occasion.
Aside from logistical issues of guaranteeing free and truthful elections in the midst of a battle, the battle would current logistical hurdles to campaigning and accessing polling websites. There may be additionally the query of whether or not and embrace Ukrainians in Russian-occupied territories and those that are internally displaced, in addition to the 6.5 million who fled preventing and presently reside overseas.
Good elections … and unhealthy
Russia did, after all, maintain elections in the course of the present battle. However the 2024 election that Putin gained with 87% of the vote was, in response to most worldwide observers, neither free nor truthful.
Moderately, it was a sham vote that solely underlined what most political scientists will affirm: Elections are at greatest a crucial however inadequate marker of democracy.
This level just isn’t wasted on Ukrainians, whose dedication to democracy strengthened within the years main as much as the 2022 invasion. Certainly, a survey taken a couple of months into the battle discovered that 76% of Ukrainians agreed that democracy was one of the best type of governance – up from 41% three years earlier.
There are different causes Ukraine could be cautious of elections. The adversarial nature of political campaigns could be divisive, particularly amongst a society in excessive stress.
Ukrainian politicians have overtly argued that holding an election in the course of the battle could be destabilizing for Ukrainian society, undermining the interior unity in face of Russian aggression.
Russian Overseas Minister Sergey Lavrov arrives for a gathering between Russia and the USA in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Feb. 18, 2025.
Russian Overseas Ministry/Anadolu by way of Getty Photos
Outdoors affect
After which there’s concern over exterior affect in any election. Ukrainians have had sufficient expertise with Russian meddling of their politics to take it as a right that the Kremlin will try and put a thumb on the size.
Russia has because the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 employed its substantial assets to affect Ukraine’s politics by way of all accessible means, starting from propaganda, financial pressures and incentives to power blackmail, threats and use of violence.
In 2004, Moscow’s electoral manipulations in favor of the pro-Russian candidate, Viktor Yanukovich, led to the Orange Revolution – by which Ukrainians rose as much as reject rigged elections. 9 years later, Yanukovich – who turned president in 2010 – was deposed although the Revolution of Dignity, which noticed Ukrainians oust a person many noticed as a Russian stooge in favor of a path towards better integration with Europe.
Putin’s historical past of meddling in elections extends past Ukraine, after all. Most just lately, the Romanian Constitutional Courtroom annulled the nation’s presidential elections, citing an electoral course of compromised by international interference.
An not possible place
In elevating elections as a prerequisite to negotiations, Putin is setting a
“catch-22” lure for Ukraine: The Ukrainian Structure states that elections can occur solely when martial regulation is lifted; however the lifting of the martial regulation is feasible solely when the “hot phase” of the battle is over. So with no ceasefire, no election is feasible.
However in refusing to conform to elections, Ukraine could be forged because the blockage to any peace deal – enjoying to a story that’s already forming within the U.S. administration that Kyiv is the issue and can have to be sidelined for there to be progress.
Briefly, in seemingly echoing Russian speaking factors on an election being a prerequisite for peace, the U.S. places the Ukrainian authorities in an not possible place: Comply with the vote and threat inner division and outdoors interference, or reject it and permit Moscow – and, maybe, Washington – to border Ukraine’s leaders as illegitimate and unable to barter on the behalf of their folks.
