Ousted defence minister Fedorov demands Ukrainian elections, challenging Zelenskyy

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's former defence minister, has called for wartime elections in a direct challenge to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, arguing that Ukrainians must not allow Vladimir Putin to determine when they can choose their own government. The intervention, delivered in a video address on Tuesday evening, elevates a domestic political crisis that has been building since Fedorov's dismissal last month touched off protests across the country.

"We must not let Putin decide when Ukrainians can choose their government," Fedorov said. He acknowledged that holding elections under current conditions would be "complex," but argued that voting rights for soldiers, refugees and civilians in frontline regions must be secured. His remarks amount to the most prominent domestic challenge to Zelenskyy's authority since Russia's full-scale invasion began more than four years ago.

The constitutional obstacle

Ukraine's constitution expressly forbids holding elections while martial law is in force. That state has been maintained without interruption since February 2022, when Russian forces crossed the border in a full-scale invasion. Lifting it to permit elections would require a parliamentary vote and, almost certainly, a presidential decision, neither of which Zelenskyy has shown any inclination to pursue while fighting continues.

The legal barrier is not merely technical. Martial law underpins the mobilisation regime that keeps the armed forces staffed. Suspending it, even temporarily, could complicate conscription and military command structures at a moment when Russia is grinding out territorial gains in eastern and southern Ukraine and bombarding Kyiv with missiles and drones on a near-daily basis. Fedorov did not specify how he would resolve this tension, beyond saying that the question must be confronted rather than deferred.

Zelenskyy himself offered a conditional path to elections in February: he said he would hold them in exchange for a ceasefire. Putin rejected the premise and kept fighting. That exchange illustrated the Catch-22 at the heart of the debate. Elections require either an end to martial law or a constitutional amendment, and neither is likely while active combat continues. But the longer the war drags on without a vote, the more ammunition Fedorov and other critics have to question the president's democratic legitimacy.

Why Fedorov's dismissal ignited protests

Fedorov was not a peripheral figure. As defence minister, he was widely credited with driving battlefield innovations, including the drone programmes and digital coordination tools that have become hallmarks of Ukraine's military resistance. His removal in last month's reshuffle was framed by the presidency as a routine government reorganisation. The public did not see it that way. Protests erupted nationwide, an unusual development in a country that has largely closed ranks behind its wartime leadership.

"People cannot endlessly live in a state where they do not understand why certain decisions are made," Fedorov said on Tuesday, alluding pointedly to his own sacking and the broader opacity of presidential decision-making. The remark was measured but its meaning was plain: Zelenskyy's government is losing the trust of its own citizens by operating without accountability.

Fedorov's popularity owes something to his record and something to timing. His departure coincided with a broader erosion of confidence in the presidency. Corruption allegations have mounted over the past year, and complaints about government transparency have moved from the margins to the mainstream of Ukrainian public discourse. Fedorov has become a vessel for discontent that extends well beyond one minister's career.

The erosion of Zelenskyy's inner circle

The president's isolation did not begin with Fedorov's dismissal. In May, Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy's chief of staff and one of the most powerful figures in Kyiv, was arrested on corruption charges. Yermak has denied the charges, but his arrest stripped Zelenskyy of the closest adviser in his inner circle. The combination of Yermak's arrest and Fedorov's ouster has left the president visibly more alone than at any point since 2022.

Zelenskyy was elected by a landslide in 2019, a mandate that carried the weight of genuine popular support. He has not faced a public vote since. More than four years on, that original mandate is fraying. His initial wartime popularity, a near-inevitable rally-around-the-flag effect, has declined over the past year as corruption complaints and questions about decision-making transparency have accumulated. European leaders have offered near-unconditional backing throughout, but domestic patience has thinner margins than diplomatic solidarity.

"People do not demand that the state never make mistakes," Fedorov said. "But they have a right to the truth." The line captures something specific about the current mood: Ukrainians are not asking for perfection from a government fighting an existential war, but they are demanding honesty about what is being decided, by whom, and for what reason.

Russia's interest in Ukrainian elections

Any Ukrainian election would take place under the shadow of Russian military action and, almost certainly, Russian interference. Moscow has a well-documented record of attempting to influence democratic outcomes in other countries, from disinformation campaigns to cyber attacks on electoral infrastructure. A wartime election in Ukraine would present an especially attractive target: the combination of displaced voters, disrupted communications and frontline chaos would create vulnerabilities that Russian operatives could exploit.

Putin and politicians sympathetic to Moscow have spent years portraying Zelenskyy's rule as illegitimate. An election would give them a new vector for that argument, whether through direct interference or through the simpler claim that any vote conducted under martial law and foreign bombardment cannot be free or fair. The paradox is that the absence of elections also feeds the illegitimacy narrative. Putin can point to a president who has not faced his electorate in over four years. Fedorov can point to the same fact and draw the opposite conclusion: that holding a vote is the only way to prove that Ukrainian democracy survives the war.

The European dimension

Zelenskyy can point to one clear achievement if forced into an election campaign: progress towards European Union membership. Ukraine was granted candidate status in June 2022 and has since opened accession negotiations, a process that the European Council has consistently supported as part of its broader strategic response to the invasion. Membership of the bloc is widely regarded in Kyiv as essential to Ukraine's postwar future, anchoring the country economically and militarily to Western institutions.

But EU membership is a long-term proposition. The accession process requires Ukraine to meet governance and anti-corruption benchmarks that sit uncomfortably alongside the current domestic criticism of presidential opacity. If Fedorov's challenge forces a debate about democratic accountability, Brussels will find itself in an awkward position: it has built its policy on unconditional support for Zelenskyy, yet its own membership criteria demand exactly the kind of transparency Fedorov is demanding.

The NATO relationship adds another layer. Alliance membership, a stated Ukrainian objective, requires stable democratic institutions. A country that cannot hold elections because of martial law, and whose president faces domestic protests over accountability, is not the profile of a ready accession state. The longer the war continues without a democratic reset, the harder it becomes to argue that Ukraine's political system meets the standards expected of members.

Whether Zelenskyy would even run

One question that hovers over the entire debate is whether Zelenskyy would contest an election at all. His 2019 mandate was sweeping, but it was a peacetime mandate. A wartime election, if one could be organised, would be a referendum on his conduct of the war as much as a choice of president. The corruption allegations swirling around his former chief of staff and the opacity of the reshuffle that removed Fedorov have done real damage to his standing.

International pressure is not helping him. US President Donald Trump is among the foreign leaders who have pushed Zelenskyy to hold elections, a position that aligns awkwardly with Putin's own insistence that Zelenskyy lacks democratic legitimacy. Zelenskyy has resisted, arguing consistently that elections cannot take place during wartime. The argument is legally sound and militarily defensible. Whether it remains politically sustainable is a different question, and one that Fedorov has now forced onto the agenda.

The immediate practical question is whether Fedorov's call generates enough momentum to force a parliamentary debate on amending the constitution or modifying the martial law provisions. That would require a coalition of parties willing to challenge a wartime president, a significant political risk. But the protests that followed Fedorov's dismissal suggest that public appetite for accountability is growing, and that the president's room for manoeuvre is narrowing.