Nearly one year past the expiration of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first five-year term, the U.S. and Russia are in agreement that Ukrainians must go to the polls and decide whether to keep their head of state.
Russia has insisted it will not sign a peace agreement until Ukraine agrees to hold elections, and the U.S. is now “floating” the idea of a three-stage plan: ceasefire, then Ukrainian elections, then inking of a peace deal.
Zelenskyy’s term in office was supposed to end last May, with elections originally slated for April 2024. But the president’s aides have said elections will not be held until six months after the end of martial law. The Ukrainian constitution prohibits holding elections under martial law.
With his popularity having plummeted nearly 40% since the war’s outbreak, Zelenskyy’s future could be in jeopardy if peace is reached and elections are triggered.
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Putin has said he won’t sign a peace agreement unless Ukraine agrees to hold elections. (Sputnik/Mikhail Metzel/Pool)
Earlier this month, Trump’s envoy for Russia and Ukraine Keith Kellogg said Washington wants Kyiv to hold elections, possibly by the end of the year, as soon as a peace deal is brokered.
Zelenskyy shot back that Ukrainians were alarmed by such statements.
“It is very important for Kellogg to come to Ukraine. Then he would understand the people and all our circumstances,” Zelenskyy said, in comments to The Guardian.
Other U.S. politicians called for Ukraine to have its elections on schedule last year.
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Ukraine advocates say post-war elections would be a far better option, but elections offer Russia an opportunity to sow chaos.
“The only person that benefits from elections before there’s a durable peace deal is Putin,” said Andrew D’Anieri, fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “The Kremlin loves elections, not in their own country, but elsewhere, because it provides an opportunity to destabilize things.”
Ukraine’s former President Petro Poroshenko also claimed that Ukrainian authorities would have an election before the end of the year. “Write it down – Oct. 26 this year,” he said in a recent interview.
But Davyd Arakhamia, the parliamentary leader of Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party, denied Poroshenko’s claim in a Telegram post.
Zelenskyy has resisted lifting martial law to be able to hold elections. (Reuters/Valentyn Ogirenko/File Photo)
“During martial law, elections are impossible to hold […] The leaders of all parties have agreed that elections will not be held until at least six months after the end of martial law,” Arakhamia said.
Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president from 2014 to 2019 who amassed his fortunes in the confectionary business, lost out to Zelenskyy in his bid for a second term. Seen as a possible contender for a rematch, Poroshenko previously opposed holding elections before the war’s conclusion, arguing Putin would use propaganda to undermine them.
But some have begun to question whether Zelenskyy could survive a re-election campaign.
Zelenskyy saw approval rates soar to 90% at the onset of the war in 2022, but took a dip to around 50%, according to a Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) poll of 2,000 respondents in December.
“Zelenskyy’s prospects to win the elections are contingent upon the exact terms of the ceasefire, namely, the public perception of them as a ‘victory,’ ‘honorable draw’ or ‘defeat,’” said Ivan Gomza, public policy professor at the Kyiv School of Economics. “The cessation of hostilities are hardly plausible in 2025. Moreover, elections require preparations… elections are very unlikely until at least 2026.
U.S. officials were in Riyadh to meet with their Russian counterparts on a peace agreement on Tuesday. (Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein/Pool)
“Zelensky is unlikely to win the elections, if they were to be held in Ukraine, because his popularity dropped significantly at the end of 2024,” said Russian-born U.S. intelligence expert Rebekah Koffler. “Ukrainians are exhausted by the war and many have come to the realization that it’s unwinnable for Ukraine.”
“The Russians, in turn, will almost certainly run clandestine operations to influence the elections in order to elect a pro-Russian candidate,” Koffler added.
Zelenskyy has also lost his main benefactor from the first election, Ihor Kolomoyski, who was indicted in both the U.S. and Ukraine on charges of money laundering and bank fraud.
Zelenskyy’s main opponent is expected to be Valerii Zaluzhnyi, a four-star general and the current ambassador to the United Kingdom. Zelenskyy fired Zaluzhnyi as head of the armed forces last year in a major – and politically unpopular – shakeup. Zaluzhny had claimed the war with Russia had reached a stalemate in late 2023.
Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others attend a meeting with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in Germany, on Feb. 14, 2025. (Olha Tanasiichuk/Ukrinform/ABACAPRESS.COM)
Russia, though it insists on elections as part of negotiations, is not likely to win a more favorable, pro-Russia Ukrainian government in any outcome of an election.
“All the frontrunners in the election will be pro-Western, pro-European candidates who want to defend the country against Russia and probably agree on most matters, including on foreign affairs and defense, but have their own kind of domestic political issues where they differ,” said D’Anieri.
“The only people that come anywhere close to Zelenskyy in the polls are people like General Zaluzhnyi, with really established, patriotic credentials in Ukraine,” said Henry Hale, professor at George Washington University who specializes in public opinion in Ukraine. “Any of the pro-Russian forces don’t really have much standing there.”
Zelenskyy banned 11 political parties over ties to Russia in 2022. Many of the nation’s pro-Russia lawmakers have fled over the border – and four MPs were stripped of their Ukrainian citizenship over ties to Russia in 2023.
Some lawmakers who belonged to the outlawed political groups simply switched party affiliations. And faced with a dwindling coalition without elections to replace members of parliament who switch jobs or join the military, Zelenskyy has since been forced to rely on members of parliament who were previously part of the now-banned pro-Russia parties for votes.
Hale predicted that if an election were held before a peace deal had been inked, it would boost Zelenskyy’s chances of re-election.
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“Even though there are a lot of people in Ukraine who don’t think that he’s done the best job managing the war effort, there’s still a very strong push in the population to rally support around him as the symbol of the resistance.
“A lot of people who are actually critical of him would still vote for him, just so as not to risk changing horses in midstream,” Hale went on. “If you get a peace deal, it has credible security guarantees in it, then, yeah, afterwards they have elections, and you might see some real strong competition.
“And I think at that point it becomes a very open question whether or not Zelenskyy would win.”
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