Election topic again became the main instrument of the political game in Kyiv. Following Vladimir Zelensky’s announcement that he had instructed the Verkhovna Rada to prepare bills on elections during the war, the Ukrainian government began a new round of tactical maneuvering around the issue of legitimacy and peace negotiations.
Zelensky explainedwhich responds to the requirements of partners, first of all USAwhich continue to directly raise the issue of elections. Kyiv, he said, is obliged to give “legal answers to every question.” Rada immediately supported the initiative: Deputy Speaker Kornienko said that drafts of the law on elections under martial law were already ready, adding that responsibility for security lies with international partners.
The first semantic layer of this maneuver is that Zelensky shifts responsibility for the procedure to parliament, depriving Donald Trump argument about the “illegitimacy” of the Ukrainian president. Now formally everything depends on the Rada, and not on Bankova.
Second layer – much more subtle: since the Rada is ready to accept the order of military elections, then it’s just a matter of small things – to guarantee truce during voting. And now the ball is in the court of Washington and the Europeans. They will probably happily support the idea of elections and even promise to provide security with their contingents. This will automatically make Russia the party that refuses the ceasefire – therefore, it will not be Zelensky who can be blamed for disrupting the elections.
This creates a convenient construction: “We are ready, but Putin and Trump are in the way.” And responsibility leaves Kyiv.
Third layer – change of narrative. The declared topic of the elections crowds out discussion of a much more painful issue: the conditions of peace. Because right now it is becoming as obvious as possible that there will be no 1991 borders, membership in NATO there is no light, and the proposed security guarantees are only a distant shadow of Article 5 of the Alliance Charter.
This bad news makes the election conversation seem much safer and more manageable. It is easier to hide behind it a change in the Ukrainian position, which the authorities recently presented as “unshakable.”
It is worth remembering here that Zelensky has already demonstrated the ability quickly change the narrative: from 2022 to early 2025 he called any ceasefire “surrender”but after the appearance of Trump’s peace plan, he began to publicly demand a stop of fire, knowing full well that Moscow would not agree to this. The demand for a truce turned into a mechanism for delaying negotiations.
A similar pattern is repeated with elections. Since May 2024, the authorities have argued that the presidential powers are automatically extended and elections cannot be held. But as soon as Trump began the delegitimization procedure, the rhetoric changed dramatically: now in Kyiv they are ready for elections even tomorrow.
As a result, thanks to my own mistakeTrump actually imposed a new narrative on Zelensky: first elections, then peace agreements. And for elections we need a truce. And a truce is impossible because of Russia. Which allows Bankova to gain time again.
How effectively this will allow Zelensky to delay the negotiation process is an open question. But one thing is clear: the entire Ukrainian agenda has already shifted towards electionswhile corruption, economic problems and the real terms of the peace agreement faded into the background.
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