Popular Ukrainian Official Raises Stakes Against Zelensky With Election Call: Democracy Held ‘Hostage’

Ukrainian President Zelensky is once again under immense internal pressure, amid new corruption investigations which run straight through the presidential office as well as growing calls to finally hold elections despite the ongoing war with Russia.

Mykhailo Fedorov, the country’s popular young former defense minister and a longtime political ally of Zelensky – who was dismissed just last month largely as a result of tensions between him and army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi – stunned Kiev’s political establishment this week by issuing a video address urgently calling for a path to elections.

“We have to answer a fundamental question – how should a state function, if the war has lasted for years?” Fedorov said in the nine-minute-long YouTube video.

“Can Russia actually be entitled to define when Ukrainians can elect their authorities next time? I’m sure it’s not. Democracy can’t be Russia’s hostage,” he said.

Zelensky has long argued that martial law must stay in place, leaving no room for new elections based on the current constitution.

The 35-year-old Fedorov’s message was unexpected, and is being widely seen as a stab in the back to Zelensky. Al Jazeera has noted, for example:

Since he was fired, Fedorov has repeatedly emphasized his loyalty to Zelenskyy and refused to accept other jobs such as a presidential aide in charge of reforms.

He also claimed to have turned down a project with Palantir Technologies, a controversial, US-based software company that began collaborating with Ukraine’s military during Fedorov’s tenure.

But Federov is now calling for “a legal, safe and realistic mechanism” to restart a full democratic process “even in the conditions of a long war” - which flies directly in the face of the Zelensky government’s stance.

This marks the first time a high-level political ally of Zelensky has publicly pushed national elections since the war’s start.

It is also significant given Federov remains well-liked among the Ukrainian public. There was a lot of anger and confusion, including rare wartime protests, upon his mid-July dismissal.

His plea has sparked a little momentum:

Former foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba reportedly backed Fedorov’s idea, saying on Tuesday that elections “after war will not be more civilized, than during it.”

“We don’t know when [the war] ends. What if it lasts for another three years? We will be living under the political model that was formed in 2019, which has already been emotionally exhausted,” Kuleba, who helmed the Foreign Ministry in 2020-2024, was quoted by the Interfax Ukraine news agency as saying.

Back in December of last year, at a moment it was clear that the Ukrainians were backing away from Washington pressure to get to the negotiating table with Russia, President Trump had unleashed rare criticism on the Zelensky government.

Ukraine’s ousted defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov called for wartime elections in a video address, arguing the nation faced a crisis of governance, in the biggest internal challenge to ‌President Volodymyr Zelenskiy since Russia’s invasion https://t.co/DJRxjcWH6t pic.twitter.com/b72CVNvj4Q

— Reuters (@Reuters) August 19, 2026

“They haven’t had an election in a long time,” Trump said at the time to Politico. “You know, they talk about a democracy, but it gets to a point where it’s not a democracy anymore.”

But the reality is that American taxpayer funds, as well as US-made weaponry, continue to flow largely uninterrupted to Kiev. Trump had vowed to quickly wind down the war and achieve peace, but that has remained elusive.