Then why is he postponing Elections like Dictators Do?
Ukraine’s election calendar would have held a vote for parliament members this week and a presidential election next March — but Ukraine’s constitution postpones elections under a state of martial law, which the government declared following Russia’s invasion 18 months ago.
Ukraine: Martial Law Introduced in Response to Russian Invasion
Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2022-03-03/ukraine-martial-law-introduced-in-response-to-russian-invasion/
Ukrainian officials and civil society leaders say no effective elections can be held amid a Russian invasion that now occupies about 18 percent of Ukraine’s territory and has uprooted at least 11 million Ukrainians from their homes. Russian missile attacks continue to strike every region of the country, routinely hitting civilian targets and destroying basic infrastructure.
“In this situation, can we have the elections?” Ukraine’s ambassador in Washington, Oksana Markarova, asked in a discussion last week at USIP.
“Well, definitely not, if you believe in free and fair elections.” She compared Ukraine’s situation with that of Britain during World War II, in which the British parliament voted annually to postpone overdue 1940 elections until after the war’s end.
Oleksii Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council (NSDC), expressed frustration that PACE was telling Ukraine to ignore its own constitution, as Ukrainian Pravda reported:
I want to stress that we will handle this [i.e., the question of elections - ed.] ourselves, in accordance with our laws and our Constitution. When the [martial law] is in effect, as it currently is, no elections can take place.
In June 2023, 77% of Ukrainians SUPPORTED Zelenskyy’s reelection. Because Zelenskyy did make this announcement, and because the Ukrainian law does indeed prohibit elections during martial law.
The Washington-based International Republican Institute (IRI) published an opinion survey last week that found:
1- 62% of Ukrainians favoring an indefinite postponement of elections until after the war,
2- a total of 71 % favoring postponement at least until a year from now or longer.
3- A similar poll issued by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology finds 81% of Ukrainians favoring a postponement of elections until “after the end of the war.”
4- A total of nine recent opinion surveys have consistently found most Ukrainians — in majorities measured at 65 to 80% favoring postponement of elections, said Peter Erben, who directs the Ukraine operations of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES).
5-Erben and Aivazovska spoke alongside Markarova at the USIP discussion last week, co-sponsored by IFES and the National Endowment for Democracy.
Even OPPOSITIONAL POLITICAL FIGURES discourage any attempt to hold elections under Russian attack.
Political analysts note that a presidential vote as scheduled next March would give extraordinary advantages to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, letting him use his wartime boost in popularity (an 82 % APPROVA RATING in the new IRI poll) to lock in a new five-year term.
6- Dmytro Razumkov, a parliament member with an opposition party who is discussed by analysts as a possible presidential candidate, told Politico in September that in part because “a huge amount of territory is either under occupation, or the infrastructure there is destroyed,” Ukraine has “NO POSSIBILITY to organize the election process on the ground” during the war.