Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, has said he may delay his nation's election and hold onto power as long as the conflict with Russia lasts.
Zelenskyy could not promise that a presidential election will be held in 2024, when his five-year term finishes, in an interview with the BBC that was released on June 22. When the nation is under martial rule, as it has been since Russian soldiers began their full-scale invasion of the nation on February 24, 2022, according to Zelenskyy, Ukrainian law forbids elections.
When asked if there would be elections in Ukraine the next year, Zelenskyy pointed out that the country was still under martial rule and expressed his hope that the war with Russia would be over by then. However, he did not indicate that he would let elections take place even if the conflict continued.
“Elections must take place in peacetime, when there is no war, according to the law,” Zelenskyy said. “I really want there to be peace in the next year and life to be as it was before the war.”
Zelenskyy proclaimed martial law on February 24, 2022, with Decree No 64/2022, and most recently requested the Ukrainian parliament for an extension of the martial law decree in May. The present period of martial law is due to end on August 18, 2023, although it might be extended beyond.
Ukrainian parliament speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk, who, like Zelenskyy, is a member of the Servant of the People, has also said that the continued conflict with Russia may force elections to be postponed. Last week, Stefanchuk told Ukrainian Pravda that holding elections amid the war "could lead to the disintegration of the state."
“We do not know how to organize voting for almost 7 million [people] who are outside Ukraine,” Stefanchuck said, according to a translation of his remarks to Ukrainian Pravda. “We do not know how to organize voting for those regions that are temporarily occupied. We do not know how to ensure proper representation, the turnout of other citizens during martial law, and whether election facilities will not be attacked. Therefore, it seems to me that a very wise decision is embedded in the legislation of Ukraine that elections cannot be held during martial law.”
Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News personality, blasted Zelenskyy's election position in the newest episode of his Twitter series on Tuesday night. Carlson ridiculed US lawmakers who have described Ukraine's conflict with Russia as a struggle to protect Ukrainian democracy.
“Tonight we regret to tell you that we have a problem. It looks like they’re not going to be able to vote in Kyiv anymore and no, for once it’s not [Russian president Vladimir Putin’s] fault,” Carlson said. “Democracy in Ukraine seems to be suspended by the world’s foremost democracy advocate himself: Field Marshall Zelenskyy.”
Carlson has frequently criticized US support for the Ukrainian side. In March, he asked US presidential candidates whether they would continue to supply Ukrainian forces with weapons and whether they believed continued support for Ukraine increased the likelihood of a direct nuclear conflict between the US and Russia.
“‘So when will you have an election?’ Well [Zelenskyy] says ‘if we win we’ll let people vote, otherwise no, you vote when we feel like it because ultimately we’re completely in charge and make all the rules. Your job is to obey or be punished, that’s our version of self-government, self means me, I’m the government,'” Carlson continued in his Twitter video. “Now that’s not just any autocrat, that’s our chief ally in the war for democracy.”
Tini Kox, president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), has been pleading with Zelenskyy to hold an election on time since at least May.
In an interview with European Pravda on May 16, Kox stated that Ukraine, as a Council of Europe member, "has to hold free and fair elections because that is one obligation under the statute and under our conventions."
Kox predicted that holding an election amid a conflict would be difficult, but he pushed that Ukraine conducts an election nevertheless.
“Nobody will blame Ukraine if not everything will be perfect,” he said. “Everybody will blame Ukraine if you do not organize elections.”
