Популярный бывший министр обороны только что призвал Украину возобновить выборы, несмотря на продолжающуюся войну. Время, выбранные формулировки и результаты опросов заставили политическую элиту Киева спорить о том, что будет дальше. ...
Сообщение Planet-Today.com. Перевод заголовка и краткого описания выполнен автоматически.
A popular former defence minister just asked Ukraine to restore elections while the war continues. The timing, the wording and the polls have left Kyiv’s political class arguing over what comes next.
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Key Takeaways by Planet Today
Democratic pressure under fire: Fedorov’s video is the first major public demand from a senior wartime figure for a vote while martial law remains in force.
Legal wall still stands: Ukraine’s constitution and martial-law legislation block national elections until the state of emergency ends or the law is rewritten.
Public mood is split by design: Most Ukrainians still prefer to wait for a ceasefire or peace; a smaller but growing share wants a mechanism sooner.
Rivalry narrative vs reform narrative: Mainstream outlets treat the speech as the strongest internal challenge to Zelensky since 2022. Russian-aligned coverage frames it as proof of a legitimacy crisis and elite fatigue.
Practical stakes are high: Any wartime ballot would have to solve voting for soldiers, refugees, occupied territories and cities under regular missile attack — or risk handing Moscow a propaganda win.
Late on Tuesday evening, Mykhailo Fedorov posted a nine-minute address that did not mention Volodymyr Zelensky by name. He did not declare himself a candidate. He did not set a date. He simply said Ukraine must invent a “legal, safe and realistic mechanism” so that a full democratic process can resume even if the war lasts years. That was enough to make Wednesday’s headlines in Kyiv, London, Washington and Moscow.
The speech landed hours after Zelensky formally nominated Yevhenii Khmara as the permanent defence minister, closing the door on Fedorov’s return to the job he held for only six months. It also arrived one day before anti-corruption investigators announced they were examining senior figures around the presidential office. The sequence is what gives the moment its charge.
What Fedorov Actually Said
Fedorov, 35, framed the argument in two layers. The first is philosophical: Ukraine is fighting to remain a free European state, therefore democracy cannot be postponed indefinitely or left to the Kremlin’s timetable.
“We must not let Putin decide when Ukrainians can choose their government. Democracy cannot be held hostage by Russia. We are fighting precisely because we want to remain a free European state.”
The second layer is domestic. He described a “systemic crisis of governance,” appointments driven by loyalty rather than results, and a parliament that should be “the heart of Ukrainian democracy, not its wallet.” He pointed to corruption cases that have already cost ministers their jobs and forced Zelensky’s former chief of staff Andriy Yermak from office. He said people cannot live forever in a state where they do not understand why decisions are made.
He also listed the groups that would have to be able to vote: serving soldiers, millions of Ukrainians abroad, and residents of front-line areas. “Complexity does not mean impossibility,” he added.
The video used footage of the street protests that followed his July dismissal. Those protests — unusual in wartime — had already forced Zelensky to replace commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi. They did not bring Fedorov back.
How He Got Here
Fedorov was a Zelensky loyalist from the 2019 campaign. He ran the digital-transformation ministry, built the Diia app, and became the public face of Ukraine’s drone-and-software war. In January 2026 he was appointed defence minister and immediately tried to overhaul procurement, push more resources into unmanned systems, and open competitive tenders. That collided with Syrskyi’s preference for conventional artillery and infantry-heavy operations in the east.
Zelensky later said he could not let the ministry and the general staff fight each other while the country was at war. He chose to remove Fedorov first. The public reaction was swift: young protesters in several cities, a Rating Group poll showing 72 percent opposed the sacking, and a sudden jump in Fedorov’s name recognition. A week later Syrskyi was also replaced.
Fedorov has said the real trigger was his attempt to clean up defence procurement. In interviews he claimed the reforms saved the budget “billions of dollars” and provoked “significant dissatisfaction” among entrenched interests. Zelensky’s circle has described the clash as a difference of military worldview rather than personal enmity. Both men have publicly downplayed the feud since.
The episode fits a pattern critics have noted for years: the sudden removal of popular wartime figures. Valerii Zaluzhnyi was dismissed as commander-in-chief in 2024 and sent to London as ambassador. Kyrylo Budanov was moved from military intelligence to the presidential office. Both had polled competitively with Zelensky. Whether that pattern is prudent wartime personnel management or the systematic sidelining of rivals is the argument that now sits underneath Fedorov’s speech.
The Legal Reality No One Can Wish Away
Ukraine has been under martial law since 24 February 2022. The constitution and the relevant statutes prohibit calling or holding national elections while it is in force. Martial law has been extended twenty times; the current period runs until 31 October 2026. Zelensky’s five-year term formally expired in May 2024. His authority continues because the law automatically prolongs the incumbent’s powers until a new vote can be held after martial law ends.
Changing that would require either lifting martial law (politically and militarily difficult while fighting continues) or rewriting election law from scratch to cover soldiers at the front, millions of refugees, occupied territories, and cities that lose power for hours at a time. Electoral experts estimate at least six months of legislative work even in peacetime. There is no ceasefire on the horizon.
Zelensky has repeated that he is ready for elections if partners can guarantee security — he once spoke of a 60-to-90-day window if those conditions were met. U.S. President Donald Trump has publicly pressed the issue. Russia has used the absence of a vote to claim Zelensky is illegitimate and therefore cannot sign any settlement. Those three facts sit in the same sentence and pull in opposite directions.
What the Polls Actually Show
Numbers are being used as weapons. A July Rating Group survey cited in Russian coverage put Zelensky’s approval at 59 percent, behind Budanov (62), Fedorov (65) and Zaluzhnyi (70). A Socis poll released in early August suggested Zelensky would lose a runoff to each of the three.
Other polls tell a more cautious story. Socis first-round figures circulating in Western reporting had Zelensky at 22.3 percent, Zaluzhnyi 21.4 percent and Fedorov 13.1 percent. The Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) found in late July–early August that only 15 percent of Ukrainians want elections while fighting continues. Another 23 percent would accept a vote after a ceasefire plus security guarantees. Fifty-seven percent still want to wait for a final peace. That last figure has fallen from 69 percent in March, but the majority remains against a wartime ballot.
KIIS also recorded that 67 percent of Ukrainians expect a new president after the war ends. The same public that wants political renewal later does not, on current evidence, want to organise that renewal under missile fire. Fedorov is betting those two instincts can be joined. The data so far say they have not been.
Mainstream Coverage versus Alternative Framing
BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, Politico, CNN and the Financial Times treated the video as the most serious internal challenge to Zelensky since the full-scale invasion. They noted that Fedorov avoided a direct attack on the president, that he offered no timetable, and that the practical obstacles remain enormous. Several pieces emphasised the risk that a partial or insecure vote would gift Moscow a narrative of illegitimacy. CNN’s analysis put it bluntly: the call “will likely, practically, come to nothing.”
RT and aligned voices presented the same facts as evidence of a deeper rot: a president who has already outlasted his mandate, a pattern of removing popular officials, and a “systemic crisis” that Fedorov merely named. Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian presidential envoy, wrote on X that Fedorov was “de facto signaling his presidential ambitions.” That interpretation is convenient for Moscow; it is also the interpretation many Ukrainian opposition voices privately share.
Neither camp is inventing the core events. The dismissal happened. The protests happened. The corruption investigations — including last year’s energy-sector kickback case that implicated Zelensky’s longtime associate Timur Mindich — happened. The constitutional ban is real. The disagreement is over what those facts add up to: a necessary wartime concentration of power, or an accumulation of unaccountable decisions that now requires a democratic reset.
For more on how drone warfare has reshaped both the battlefield and Ukraine’s internal politics, see Planet Today’s recent reporting on Ukraine’s large-scale drone strike on Moscow. Fedorov’s earlier work on unmanned systems is part of that same story.
The Day-After Problems No Speech Can Solve
Even if parliament found a legal workaround, the logistics would be brutal. More than a million people are in uniform, many of them on a 1,200-kilometre front. Several million live abroad. Large parts of the east and south are occupied or under constant fire. Russia regularly strikes energy infrastructure, so any electronic register or counting centre would be a target. Polling stations themselves would be gathering points for drones.
A vote that excluded soldiers, the diaspora or front-line residents would be challenged at home and abroad. A vote that included them would require technology, security corridors and international observers that do not currently exist. Zelensky’s standing offer — elections in exchange for credible security guarantees — is an attempt to shift that burden onto partners. Those partners have not yet accepted it.
There is also the question of occupied territory. Russia has already signalled it will run its own votes there. Any Ukrainian election that cannot reach those areas would be incomplete by design. Moscow would treat that incompleteness as proof the result is invalid. Kyiv would treat any Russian-organised vote as illegal. The two claims would sit side by side on the same day.
Corruption, Loyalty and the Timing
Fedorov’s speech spent as much time on governance as on elections. He argued that the criterion for appointment has become personal loyalty rather than professionalism. That charge resonates because it follows a string of visible cases: the 2025 attempt to clip the wings of NABU and SAPO (later reversed after street protests and Western pressure), the Mindich energy scandal, and the resignations that followed.
On Wednesday 19 August, the same anti-corruption agencies announced they were investigating a group that allegedly included sitting and former officials linked to the presidential office. The timing is either coincidence or another data point in the story Fedorov is telling. Readers can decide which.
Wartime governments everywhere centralise power. The question Ukraine now faces is how long that centralisation can last before the public that is doing the fighting starts to ask for a say in who is doing the deciding. Fedorov did not invent that question. He simply said it out loud while still popular enough to be heard.
What Happens Next
Parliament is expected to confirm Khmara as defence minister. Zelensky has not yet responded directly to the video. Fedorov has not announced a party, a campaign or a date. The legal barrier remains. The KIIS numbers remain. The missiles continue to fall.
One possible path is that the speech stays a speech — a marker laid down for the moment martial law eventually lifts. Another is that it becomes the opening move of a longer political contest among Zelensky, Zaluzhnyi, Budanov and now Fedorov. A third is that the West, or a future U.S. administration, uses the demand as leverage in any settlement talks. None of those paths is guaranteed. All of them are now on the table because a 35-year-old former minister decided the conversation could no longer wait.
The war has already lasted four and a half years. Ukrainians have shown they can endure far more than most societies. Whether they should also be asked to wait indefinitely for the right to choose their next government is the argument Fedorov has forced into the open. The constitution, the polls, the security situation and the history of wartime democracies all pull in different directions. The facts are on the record. The choice, when it finally comes, will still belong to Ukrainians.
Related reading on the economic and technological pressures of a long war: how drone industry figures have become targets and the wider geopolitical coverage on Planet Today.
Original source: RT, 19 August 2026, “Ukraine’s ex-defense chief Fedorov calls for wartime elections”. Additional reporting drawn from BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, Politico, CNN, Financial Times, KIIS, Socis and Rating Group surveys published in July–August 2026.
Disclaimer for fact-checkers: This article summarises contemporaneous reporting from Ukrainian, Western and Russian sources. RT is a Russian state-funded outlet. Western outlets operate under their own editorial lines. Polling organisations (KIIS, Socis, Rating Group) use different methodologies and samples. Martial-law provisions and constitutional text are a matter of public record. Readers should consult primary documents and multiple outlets before drawing conclusions.
