In the biggest challenge to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy domestically, ousted defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, has called for elections in the middle of the ongoing war with Russia.
In the biggest political challenge to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy yet, ousted defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, on Tuesday called for an election in the middle of the ongoing war with Russia.
In a nine-minute address posted on YouTube, Fedorov warned that widespread corruption has undermined Ukraine’s ability to fight Russia and accused Zelenskyy’s government of systemic failures. He said that democracy is not a peacetime luxury that should be forgotten with the war.
“We are fighting precisely because we want to remain a free European state. Therefore, we must find a legal, safe, and realistic mechanism that will allow Ukraine to restore a full democratic process even amidst a prolonged war,” said Fedorov.
Last month, Zelenskyy sacked Fedorov as the defence minister in the latest government shake-up. The decision came as a shock and triggered widespread protests. In his six-month tenure, Fedorov had emerged as the face of the country’s highly successful drone campaign against Russia.
Zelenskyy’s decision was linked to the breakdown of the relationship between the defence ministry and military’s top commanders. He eventually also sacked General Oleksandr Syrskyi, the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian military, who had increasingly clashed with Fedorov. Even though Fedorov welcomed Syrskyi’s sacking and the promotion of Major General Mykhailo Drapatyi, the Joint Forces chief, as the Commander-in-Chief, he was not recalled to the Cabinet.
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While Fedorov appears to be counting on personal popularity and public’s disgruntlement with corruption allegations to rally people behind the call, both the government and Opposition MPs in the parliament have opposed the call for an election over concerns that a wartime election would hamper war efforts.
In Ukraine, elections cannot be held during martial law, which was imposed when Russia launched the full-scale invasion of the country in 2022.
MPs have also said that Fedorov’s call appears to be a last-ditch effort to force Zelenskyy to reappoint him as the defence minister, according to Financial Times.
Oleksandr Merezhko, who chairs the parliament’s foreign policy committee, said that the only winner of a wartime election would be Putin because he would use the “vulnerability of Ukraine during the election campaign to his favour”, according to FT.
Another MP told the newspaper that a fierce election campaign would “bury the country” and suggested Fedorov was “in a hurry” to make his mark “because in a year people might forget him”.