Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was shut out of the discussions regarding the way forward for his nation, which passed off in Saudi Arabia on Feb. 18, 2025. In actual fact, 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 cellphone 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 could be very a lot consistent 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 doubt undermined Kyiv’s place and affect.
To that finish, the U.S. is more and more falling consistent 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 doubtlessly 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 conflict, extremely suspect given Russia’s ongoing assaults on its neighbor and its steadfast refusal so far to conform to any momentary truce.
But the Kremlin is pushing the narrative that the issue is that there is no such thing as a legit 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 navy assist for Kyiv, Putin hopes, permitting him a fillip in what has change into a conflict 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 are usually not legit 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 Pictures)
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 assert, incorrectly, that Zelenskyy’s approval ranking was all the way down to “4%.” The most recent polling really 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 relating to what it describes because the “legal aspects related to his [Zelenskyy’s] legitimacy” are primarily based on the premise that the Ukraine president’s five-year time period as president of Ukraine ought to have led to 2024.
And elections in Ukraine would have taken place in Could of that 12 months had it not been for the martial legislation 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 relating to the extension of parliament’s powers till martial legislation is lifted, constitutional attorneys in Ukraine are inclined to agree that the implication is that this additionally applies to presidential powers.
However what the legislation 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 entice
Zelenskyy shouldn’t be against elections in precept and has agreed that elections needs to be held when the time is correct. “Once martial law is over, then the ball is in parliament’s court – the parliament then picks a date for elections,” Zelenskyy acknowledged in a Jan. 2 interview.
And he seems to have the backing of the vast majority of Ukrainians. In Could 2024, 69% of Ukrainians polled mentioned Zelenskyy ought to stay president till the tip of marshal legislation, 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 shouldn’t be the time. Petro Poroshenko, Zelenskyy’s most important political rival, has dismissed the concept of wartime elections, as has Inna Sovsun, the chief of the opposition Golos Get together.
Aside from logistical issues of guaranteeing free and honest elections in the midst of a conflict, the battle would current logistical hurdles to campaigning and accessing polling websites. There’s additionally the query of whether or not and find out how to embrace Ukrainians in Russian-occupied territories and people who are internally displaced, in addition to the 6.5 million who fled combating and at the moment reside overseas.
Good elections … and dangerous
Russia did, in fact, maintain elections through the present battle. However the 2024 election that Putin received with 87% of the vote was, in line with most worldwide observers, neither free nor honest.
Slightly, it was a sham vote that solely underlined what most political scientists will affirm: Elections are at finest a obligatory however inadequate marker of democracy.
This level shouldn’t be wasted on Ukrainians, whose dedication to democracy strengthened within the years main as much as the 2022 invasion. Certainly, a survey taken just a few months into the conflict discovered that 76% of Ukrainians agreed that democracy was the most effective type of governance – up from 41% three years earlier.
There are different causes Ukraine may be cautious of elections. The adversarial nature of political campaigns might be divisive, particularly amongst a society in excessive stress.
Ukrainian politicians have brazenly argued that holding an election through the conflict could be destabilizing for Ukrainian society, undermining the inner unity in face of Russian aggression.
Russian International Minister Sergey Lavrov arrives for a gathering between Russia and the USA in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Feb. 18, 2025.
Russian International Ministry/Anadolu by way of Getty Pictures
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 with no consideration that the Kremlin will try to put a thumb on the size.
Russia has because the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 employed its substantial sources to affect Ukraine’s politics by means of all out there 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 – through 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, in fact. Most not too long ago, the Romanian Constitutional Courtroom annulled the nation’s presidential elections, citing an electoral course of compromised by overseas interference.
An inconceivable place
In elevating elections as a prerequisite to negotiations, Putin is setting a
“catch-22” entice for Ukraine: The Ukrainian Structure states that elections can occur solely when martial legislation is lifted; however the lifting of the martial legislation is feasible solely when the “hot phase” of the conflict is over. So and not using a ceasefire, no election is feasible.
However in refusing to conform to elections, Ukraine might be solid because the blockage to any peace deal – taking part in to a story that’s already forming within the U.S. administration that Kyiv is the issue and can must be sidelined for there to be progress.
In brief, in seemingly echoing Russian speaking factors on an election being a prerequisite for peace, the U.S. places the Ukrainian authorities in an inconceivable place: Comply with the vote and danger inside division and out of doors 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.