Las pressures threats from Donald Trump to Volodimir Zelensky calls elections in Ukraine Despite being at war, it seems to have had an effect. The European leader has shown, for the first time so far in the Russian invasion, his openness to organize presidential elections in the country within “60 to 90 days”. To do this, it first demands security guarantees from the United States and European allies. calls on Parliament to change the law which, today, makes it impossible to hold any electoral process.
Zelensky has adopted this position after meeting this Tuesday in Italy with Giorgia Meloni and after listening to the umpteenth words of pressure from Trumpdemanding ballot boxes and doubting that Ukraine is a “true democracy.”
“I ask now, and I say it openly, that the US help me. Together with our European partners, we can ensure the security needed to hold elections. If this happens, Ukraine will be ready to organize elections within 60 to 90 days from now on,” said Zelensky, after more than three and a half years of war.
What the law says
Currently, under normal conditions, they would have been held in the spring of 2024. Then, on May 20, the ordinary five-year mandate that Zelensky obtained after his electoral victory in 2019 expired.
However, the the prohibition of calling electoral processes while martial law is in forcesomething that has occurred since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022.
For this reason, the president of the country has asked Ukrainian legislators to start working on parliamentary avenues and legal to modify the electoral law and avoid the constitutional blockade. “I am waiting for proposals from our partners, waiting for suggestions from our deputies, and I am willing to call elections,” the president added this Tuesday.
The other problems Trump doesn’t want to see
In a war scenario not only on the Donbas frontbut under the Russian bombs in multiple cities in the country, Ukraine did not consider the suitability of going to elections. In this regard, the authorities have always highlighted the impossibility and danger of removing the ballot boxes in the middle of the conflict.
In addition to the obvious risks, there are numerous logistical problemswith hundreds of thousands of soldiers displaced to the battlefield, devastated cities and without the possibility of opening ‘electoral colleges’ and with a country that is economically too damaged to face the costs of the process.
Rhetorically, Zelensky himself questioned several of these questions before the press: “How would this be done?how elections are held under missile attacks“What about our military? How will they vote?”
Unaware of all this, Donald Trump has been demanding them for some time, at the height of his disagreements. Later, in better times, he lowered his demands, but in recent days he has returned to the fray and has defended it in a , where he assured that Zelensky is “using war to not hold elections.”
“I don’t know who would win, maybe Zelensky would win, but elections haven’t been held for a long time. You know, They talk about democracy, but there comes a point when it is no longer democracy.“Trump concluded in this regard, who in previous appointments came to contrast the situation in Ukraine with Russia, where there were elections at this time.
If Russia can be called elections as such…
