Zelensky is thinking about the “pros and cons” of presidential elections in 2024

“O Ukrainian president is thinking and weighing the pros and cons”, declared Dmytro Kuleba, who was speaking via videoconference at the World Political Conference, organized in the United Arab Emirates.

“It’s not that he doesn’t want to hold elections, but holding elections under the current circumstances would require unprecedented work and would require facing unprecedented challenges,” he added.

Before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, presidential elections were planned for 2024. But martial law, in force since the start of the war, makes electoral functioning difficult.

At the beginning of September, Volodymyr Zelensky had already said that he was ready to organize elections in his country in times of war “if the people need it”.

“It’s not a question of democracy”, he assured, but, in addition to security problems, there are other problems to be resolved, including the vote of soldiers fighting in the trenches, or the arrival of international observers in a war zone.

To this list, Dmytro Kuleba added the organization of voting for millions of Ukrainians abroad and the risk that polling stations in Ukraine could become “perfect targets for Russian missiles and ‘drones'”.

Zelensky has not said clearly whether he will seek a second term, but one of his former advisers, who fell into disgrace for having contradicted the official version of a Russian missile that killed 44 people in Dnipro, has already announced his presidential ambitions.

“Yes, I will run,” Oleksi Arestovich told the Interfax-Ukraine agency on Wednesday, publishing a reform program on social media.

The military offensive launched on February 24, 2022 by Russia in Ukraine caused, according to the most recent UN data, the worst refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War (1939-1945).

The Russian invasion – justified by Russian President Vladimir Putin with the need to “denazify” and demilitarize Ukraine for Russia’s security – was condemned by most of the international community, which has responded by sending weapons to Ukraine and imposing Russia from political and economic sanctions.

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