He won’t be leaving office, on the pretense that Ukraine’s Constitution currently prohibits holding elections under a state of martial law. Based on this reasoning, the elections for the Rada, Ukraine’s Parliament, were also canceled in the fall. This seems to make Ukraine a less developed democracy than Haiti, where the legislators left office when their terms expired but no new election had been held. The Western media is rushing to defend Zelensky’s decision to use the law to stay in power without winning a new election, because of course Democracy™ just means “our side” and “managerial government enslaved by financial interests” to them.
There are three major problems with the Ukrainian government’s claims here. First, is entirely possible for Zelensky and his party to change the law to hold elections if they were so inclined. Second, Zelensky himself has refused to make peace or even take part in realistic negotiations with Russia. And third, most of Ukraine is not a war zone and keeping the whole of the country under martial law is unjustified. Up to this point, Ukraine has shut down a church, banned opposition political parties, consolidated media into one platform, and now has a government where no one is currently serving a legal term. The only conclusion we can come to is that at this time Ukraine is a massively less democratic country than Russia.
Regarding changing the Constitution to hold elections under martial law, Zelensky himself has said it was possible but demanded that the United States would have to pay for it for them to do so. The Western powers have not shown any interest in this happening, with the BBC going so far as to say that Zelensky’s popularity makes elections unnecessary anyhow. There isn’t great data on this because of the lack of interest, but one Ukrainian organization known as SOCIS conducted a poll at the beginning of 2024 which showed that the General Valerii Zaluzhnyi could beat Zelensky by a wide margin—Zaluzhnyi was removed from his position around the time this poll was released.
Of course, one could argue this about any election when there is almost no polling data and you aren’t holding the election to see what happens. I wonder if the Joe Biden administration has considered this strategy: just claim American elections are unnecessary as the result is a foregone conclusion. It isn’t being overly cynical to imagine that Ukraine’s sponsors don’t want to hold elections because they fear a successor would make peace, despite that any parties which seem likely to do so have been banned on the grounds that they are “disloyal.” (I’ve been assured that no country would allow such parties to operate during a war.)
There are a few ways in which political leaders stay in power well past their terms, and the most common is because of some sort of ongoing emergency which they say prevents elections from being held. I will grant Zelensky that Russia’s invasion is a much more serious crisis than a rebel group in the hinterlands or undefined security concerns. But this doesn’t change the fact that he is the one refusing any path towards peace. Zelensky continues to take a maximalist position which no one can possibly believe in: the war will be over when Ukraine restores its borders at the time of independence, which is to say when they’ve taken all of Crimea and the Donbas. Even for our era of absurdity, this is the least reality-based position Zelensky could possibly take, and is indicative of someone who is not trying to end the war. Add to that the fact that he keeps promoting a “Peace Summit” which Russia won’t be at and you can see he isn’t taking peace seriously. Zelensky is basically only willing to negotiate how much Russia will pay in reparations and how to best prosecute Putin. It takes a man of rare delusion to earnestly demand the enemy surrender in a war you are currently losing, but I suppose one has to admire his audacity.
The most important part of this that is never called into question is the premise that Ukraine should be under martial law at all. Contrary to what the media may lead you to believe, this is not a normal long-term status of a “democracy” during a war. Even in Rome, which invented the word “dictator,” the institution of the dictator was strictly limited to one year—and though this wasn’t a legal requirement, generally given to someone who knew about war and was not some comedian.
Martial law is for situations where civil law is unable to function. Even during the world wars most countries were not under martial law. In fact, Adolf Hitler only proclaimed martial law in the front zones in February of 1945, around six weeks before his suicide, and even then not for the whole country. A fair counterpoint is that Nazi Germany had few civil liberties so there was less necessity to suspend them, but the fact that Hitler declared martial law demonstrates there was a difference between that and civilian government. A more relevant example to this current conflict would be France during World War I, which was not under martial law. There are zones of internationally recognized Ukraine that it is impossible to civilly administer; of course, most of all from the Ukrainian perspective are the Russian-occupied ones, but the whole of the country behind the Dnieper has no justification for being under martial law. This is simply tyranny and there is no reason to believe military government helps the civilian part of the country better support the war.
The media repeats endlessly that Ukraine is a great democracy and Russia is the enemy of democracy. However, it is Zelensky that has taken the most undemocratic actions; on top of the civil liberties violations he has decided to simply not have elections. It is objectively true that though it isn’t a particularly free country, Russia is more democratic than Ukraine. People may cry out that Putin has stayed in well past his original term limit, but he dropped down to prime minister and changed the Constitution, which is by all accounts legal. Putin’s path is that of more sophisticated long-time rulers, such as Chad’s Idriss Deby or even Turkey’s Recep Erdogan: change the Constitution and hold elections with fair counting but less fair campaigning. Zelensky instead seems to have gone with the more tinpot method of staying in power: declare an emergency and don’t hold elections at all.
Zelensky may be a professional clown, but I think he has it all figured out. The Zelensky method will be to never make peace because of maximalist aims, attain a ceasefire but permanent state of war, and stay in power forever due to martial law. He is going to be Eastern Europe’s new Kim Dynasty, and you will notice he’s already dressed for the job (though even North Korea bothers to hold fake elections).
Source: Libertarian Institute.
