‘Now is not the time’

Zelensky’s term should have ended on May 20. Here’s how Ukrainians feel about him staying in power without an election.

May 20 marked five years since Volodymyr Zelensky was inaugurated as Ukraine’s president. Ukrainian law mandates that presidential terms cannot exceed five years. However, the law also requires the president to remain in office until a new head of state is in place — and with martial law currently in effect, Ukraine’s elections have been postponed. Predictably, Russian propagandists and politicians have pounced on this contradiction, claiming that Zelensky’s presidency is now “illegitimate.” Meduza spoke with representatives from Zelensky’s office, Ukrainian opposition politicians, and ordinary citizens to learn how people in Ukraine feel about postponing the vote and what it means for the Zelensky government’s legitimacy.

For several months, Russian officials and propagandists have been spreading the narrative that after May 20, Volodymyr Zelensky would supposedly lose formal legitimacy as Ukraine’s president.

On April 28, for example, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated: “Zelensky’s fate is unambiguously predetermined, and very soon, the moment will come when many, including [people] in Ukraine, will question his legitimacy.”

Viktor Medvedchuk, who led the pro-Kremlin party Opposition Platform – For Life (and whose youngest daughter is Vladimir Putin’s goddaughter), echoed this sentiment on May 2. Medvedchuk was charged with treason back in 2021 but escaped house arrest in the early days of the full-scale war. He was recaptured in April 2022 and exchanged for Ukrainian prisoners of war the following September.

Putin himself commented on the situation cautiously, saying that “this question should first and foremost be answered by Ukraine’s political and legal system.” Meanwhile, Russian propagandists are telling their followers that on May 21, “Zelensky’s legitimacy will come to a complete end” and that this, among other things, may affect Ukrainians’ willingness to fight for their country.

Even though we’re outlawed in Russia, we continue to deliver exclusive reporting and analysis from inside the country.

Our journalists on the ground take risks to keep you informed about changes in Russia during its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Support Meduza’s work today.

Conflicting rules

Due to a legal contradiction, President Zelensky’s term has indeed formally ended. According to the Ukrainian Constitution, presidential terms are strictly limited to five years — and Zelensky was inaugurated on May 20, 2019. At the same time, Article 108 of the Ukrainian Constitution states that the president must fulfill his duties until a new head of state is elected. Before the full-scale war began, the next elections were scheduled for March 31, 2024. But now, they’ve been postponed due to martial law, which will be in effect in Ukraine until at least August 11.

In the summer of 2023, Zelensky suggested that it might still be possible to hold elections and said that if so, he would run for reelection. However, he noted that it would be very difficult to ensure security at polling stations under wartime conditions. That fall, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that Zelensky was constantly weighing the pros and cons of holding elections based on the situation at the front and other war-related factors.

Ultimately, on November 6, 2023, the president stated that “now is not the time for elections.” “We must recognize that now is the time for defense, the time for a battle that will decide the fate of the state and its people, not the time for the kind of disinformation that only Russia would expect from Ukraine,” he said.

This statement came against the backdrop of Zelensky’s reported conflict with General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, then the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. During the war, Zaluzhnyi became the second most popular person in Ukraine, and some Ukrainian experts suggested that Zaluzhnyi could pose serious competition to Zelensky if he decided to run for office. On February 8, amidst these discussions, Zaluzhnyi was dismissed from his post as Ukraine’s top commander. On May 9, Zelensky appointed him as ambassador to the United Kingdom.

‘More pressing issues’

“The country is at war, and holding elections is impossible. The overwhelming majority of the Ukrainian population understands this perfectly well. The legitimacy of the Ukrainian president is not in question at all,” Yevhen Holovakha, the director of the Institute of Sociology at the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, told Meduza. He emphasized that Ukrainians are currently dealing with “much more pressing issues than Russian disinformation campaigns about our government’s legitimacy.”

Volodymyr Paniotto, the head of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), agreed. He noted that in the fall of 2023, following Oleksiy Arestovych’s announcement that he intended to run for president, there was discussion in Ukrainian society about whether or not elections should be held. Arestovych suggested conducting elections via the government app Diia, claiming 90 percent of Ukrainians are registered there. But Paniotto told Meduza that this number is entirely inaccurate: sociologists estimate that only 56 percent of Ukrainians use the Diia app. “In my view, [holding elections] is sheer fantasy,” Paniotto said. “Neither those on the front lines nor those who have left [the country] would be able to vote.”

In October 2023, KIIS conducted its first survey asking Ukrainians when they thought the next elections should be held; 81 percent of respondents answered that it should take place only after the war. The institute then polled people with more detailed questions and varied wording, but each time “the population clearly expressed opposition” to holding elections during the war, Paniotto explained.

The Razumkov Center think tank also polled Ukrainians about elections. A survey conducted from March 21–27 showed that 59.5 percent of respondents felt negatively about holding elections before the end of the war; only 22 percent viewed the idea of holding elections positively. “[In recent weeks], we haven’t even been conducting surveys on this topic; we don’t see it as an issue,” Paniotto added.

Ukraine’s Western partners share this view. For instance, during his visit to Kyiv in early May, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that elections in Ukraine would take place when “Ukrainians agree that conditions allow [for it].”

‘Right now, it’s impossible’

There aren’t any influential factions in Ukraine’s parliament that are seriously interested in disputing the president’s legitimacy, according to a Verkhovna Rada source who spoke with Meduza. He noted that deputies have only publicly raised this issue a few times — such as when former speaker Dmytro Razumkov suggested that the Constitutional Court should consider the matter.

The source believes that any talk of Zelensky’s “illegitimacy” is an attempt by Russian authorities to destabilize the situation in Ukraine. “It’s hard to say whether Russia can do anything at the level of [Ukrainian domestic] politics. People aren’t protesting over this issue. [The Russians] will stir things up among regular citizens on TikTok and Telegram channels,” he continued.

When asked whether officials had prepared for May 21 in any specific way, a source close to Zelensky’s office gave a vague answer: “The preparation is always the same: doing our job. This includes combating propaganda and opposition that isn’t always rational.” He added that, to his knowledge, the authorities conducted “some [closed] surveys” among the public about Zelensky’s legitimacy after May 20, but he refused to disclose the results.

“People don’t always understand why we’re asking about May 21. Nobody reads the Constitution over lunch,” he said. He added that there are no plans to hold presidential elections anytime soon: “We’re in very tough times. In this kind of situation, people aren’t thinking so much about politics. Ask a Kharkiv resident about elections now, and you’ll hear something unprintable.”

A deputy from a major opposition party in the Verkhovna Rada agreed with this assessment. He said that nobody in parliament raises the issue of elections because “any comment from any politician on this matter will be seen as a provocation,” and “no parliamentary force talks about this because nobody wants to look crazy.”

I’d be the first to want presidential elections since I’m in opposition to Zelensky, but right now it’s impossible. How will soldiers be able to vote? How will [Ukrainian] refugees vote? Who will guarantee safety during the vote count when rockets and bombs are flying? It’s impossible. And Ukrainian law states that the president and parliament exercise their powers until the next elections.

Sociologist Volodymyr Paniotto also said that the Ukrainian opposition doesn’t try to exploit the idea of “Zelensky’s illegitimacy” in any way. He believes this is partially due to the fact that, according to all polls, the only person who could compete with the incumbent president is Valerii Zaluzhnyi, not any of the opposition figures (including former president Petro Poroshenko). “All the others are far behind Zelensky,” Paniotto added. He thinks that if elections were held in Ukraine right now and Zaluzhnyi decided to run, he could defeat Zelensky, “but it’s unclear whether [Zaluzhnyi] will ever run.”

Reporting by Elizaveta Antonova