‘I won’t abandon my state’: Zelensky commits to running for president if there’s a wartime election

If Ukraine is still at war in 2024, its current president Volodymyr Zelensky will run for another term in office. In an interview with the Portuguese public television RTP, Zelensky said he will not abandon Ukraine in wartime.

“In 2024, if the war still continues, and if there’s an election, I will never in my life abandon my state. I’m the guarantor of the Constitution, and I must defend it under all circumstances,” Zelensky told the interviewer.

Although the next presidential election is due to take place in Ukraine in 2024, the state constitution prohibits holding elections when martial law is in effect.

Clarifying the conditions under which a wartime election could still happen, Zelensky said that the main requirements would be to ensure the voters’ safety and to make it possible for involuntarily displaced people to cast their ballots.

If there’s an election, it should take place on our territory, so that members of the military could vote on the front line. This is why we need election monitors from all over the world. I want everything to be lawful, transparent, and democratic, just like the election when I became president, when everybody called it an honest election. This is something I don’t want to lose.

Before the presidential election of 2019, Zelensky said he was only contending for one term and wouldn’t run a second time.