Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in remarks made public yesterday that it would be too dangerous for Ukraine to hold an election while it fights Russia’s invasion, after a call by his former defense minister to organize a vote.
Ukraine has suspended elections under martial law, a measure widely supported by the population as the country focuses on fighting off the Russian invasion launched in 2022.
“I believe that in a war like this, elections as such are a huge risk. Elections right now are a tsunami for the country that will split Ukraine,” Zelenskiy said.
Photo: AFP
“If we want to destroy the country, then we can move in the direction of elections during these times of war,” added the 48-year-old, who became president in 2019.
He made the comments on Saturday in a briefing with journalists, the first in months amid several political crises.
The latest upheaval saw thousands of people take to the streets after Zelenskiy fired popular former Ukrainian minister of defense Mykhailo Fedorov.
The ousted Fedorov this week made a surprise call to find a way to organize elections — but without offering a road map, and prompting even some of his supporters to distance themselves from him.
Experts have cited a flurry of obstacles to elections, including how soldiers, millions of Ukrainian refugees and people from occupied territories would vote, as well as disinformation threats from Russia.
The election call also came as Ukraine struggles to fend off daily Russian missile and drone strikes on Kyiv and other cities.
Only 15 percent of Ukrainians believe elections should be held before the end of hostilities, a poll by the Kyiv Institute of Sociology showed.
Meanwhile, France on Saturday promised to deliver new interceptor missiles to Ukraine amid a surge in Russian strikes that have pushed civilian deaths in the four-and-a-half-year war to their highest since the first months of Moscow’s invasion.
At least 13 people were killed in strikes overnight and through Saturday — seven in Ukraine, four in Russia and two in Russia-annexed Crimea.
The latest deadly attacks come as rescuers in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rig were sifting through the rubble of a partly destroyed shopping center, where 16 were killed a day earlier in a Russian drone attack.
Ukraine’s allies in the Coalition of the Willing — an initiative led by France and the UK — were today to meet to look at how to ramp up pressure on Moscow to halt its invasion.
“It is crucial to provide Ukraine with all the necessary means to defend its skies and thwart this aggression,” French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on X.
Russia has pounded Ukraine — the Kyiv especially — with ballistic missile attacks in the past few months.
The hard-to-intercept weapons reach their target within minutes, making it virtually impossible for locals in Kyiv to reach an underground shelter in time.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in comments published on Saturday that Kyiv had opened “Pandora’s box” with its strikes on Russian economic targets, saying that Russia would hit back at Ukraine’s “most sensitive economic sectors.”
Ukraine has this summer escalated a campaign of drone strikes targeting Russian economic infrastructure, including oil refineries and online retailers’ warehouses, seeking to destroy infrastructure it says is central to Russia’s war effort.
Russia has responded with strikes against Ukrainian economic infrastructure, including Ukrainian grain exports via the Black Sea.
“The Kyiv regime set out to damage our economy. What did it do? It opened this Pandora’s box itself. Well then, expect a response targeting your most sensitive economic sectors,” Putin said in comments to a Russian state television journalist.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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