{"id":106193,"date":"2025-12-10T11:59:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T11:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=106193"},"modified":"2025-12-10T11:59:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T11:59:00","slug":"ukraine-ready-for-elections-if-partners-guarantee-security-zelensky-says-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=106193","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine \u2018ready for elections\u2019 if partners guarantee security, Zelensky says"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ukraine is \u201cready for elections\u201d, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said, after US President Donald Trump repeated claims Kyiv was \u201cusing war\u201d to avoid holding them.<\/p>\n

Zelensky\u2019s five-year term as president was due to end in May 2024, but elections have been suspended in Ukraine since martial law was declared after Russia\u2019s invasion.<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters following Trump\u2019s comments in a wide-raging\u00a0Politico interview, Zelensky said he would ask for proposals to be drawn up which could change the law.<\/p>\n

Elections could be held in the next 60 to 90 days if security for the vote was guaranteed with the help of the US and other allies, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m asking now, and I\u2019m stating this openly, for the US to help me, perhaps together with our European colleagues, to ensure security for the elections,\u201d he told reporters.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe issue of elections in Ukraine, I believe, depends first and foremost on our people, and this is a question for the people of Ukraine, not the people of other countries. With all due respect to our partners,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard hints that we\u2019re clinging to power, or that I personally am clinging to the presidency\u201d and \u201cthat\u2019s why the war isn\u2019t ending\u201d, which he called \u201cfrankly, a completely unreasonable narrative\u201d.<\/p>\n

Russia has consistently claimed Zelensky is an illegitimate leader and demanded new elections as a condition of a ceasefire deal \u2013 a talking point which has been repeated by Trump.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey talk about a democracy, but it gets to a point where it\u2019s not a democracy anymore,\u201d the US president told Politico. He has suggested\u00a0without evidence that Zelensky is the main obstacle to peace\u00a0as US-led efforts to broker a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine continue.<\/p>\n

Such a vote would only be fair if all Ukrainians could participate, including soldiers fighting on the front line, a Ukrainian opposition MP told the BBC.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn order for these elections to be fair all of the People of Ukraine would need to be allowed to vote,\u201d Lesia Vasylenko told the BBC World Service\u2019s Newsday programme.<\/p>\n

She said that \u201celections are never possible in wartime\u201d, alluding to the suspension of elections in the UK during World War Two.<\/p>\n

Discussions around holding elections have made headlines since Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. They have been routinely dismissed by Ukraine\u2019s government, opposition and public alike, arguing unity in the war effort must come first.<\/p>\n

A poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in March found about 78% of people opposed holding elections even after a complete settlement of the war.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven a year ago, Zelensky said that he was ready for elections as soon as the conditions allow\u201d in the face of previous pressure, Hanna Shelest, a foreign policy analyst with the think tank Ukrainian Prism, told the BBC.<\/p>\n

The question was, however, how to create the conditions Zelensky outlined, Shelest told the Newsroom programme on the BBC World Service, given there were around one million soldiers and four million refugees who would be voting \u2013 as well as unsecured areas in the country and ongoing strikes.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou cannot guarantee the security of the polling stations,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"UkraineUkraine is “ready for elections”, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said, after US President Donald Trump repeated claims Kyiv was “using war” to avoid holding them.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_2277560469115098_106292521332774":"","twitter_aToxNzczMzI3Njk4OTg4ODUxMjAxOw==_1773327698988851200":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1910,10,9,2822,2044,2565],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","category-politics","category-popular","category-ukraine","category-us","category-volodymyr-zelensky"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=106193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=106193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=106193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=106193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}