{"id":38792,"date":"2025-02-20T13:45:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-20T13:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=38792"},"modified":"2025-02-20T05:23:18","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T05:23:18","slug":"in-pushing-for-ukraine-elections-trump-is-falling-into-putin-laid-trap-to-delegitimize-zelenskyy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/in-pushing-for-ukraine-elections-trump-is-falling-into-putin-laid-trap-to-delegitimize-zelenskyy\/","title":{"rendered":"In pushing for Ukraine elections, Trump is falling into Putin-laid trap to delegitimize Zelenskyy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Lena Surzhko Harned<\/a>, Penn State<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was shut out of the discussions<\/a> concerning the future of his country, which took place in Saudi Arabia on Feb. 18, 2025. In fact, there were no Ukrainian representatives, nor any European Union ones \u2013 just U.S. and Russian delegations, and their Saudi hosts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The meeting \u2013 which followed a mutually complimentary phone call between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin just days earlier<\/a> \u2013 was gleefully celebrated in Moscow<\/a>. The absence of Ukraine in deciding its own future is very much in line with Putin\u2019s policy toward its neighbor. Putin has long rejected Ukrainian statehood<\/a> and the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government, or as he calls it the \u201cKyiv regime<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the U.S. delegation did reiterate that future discussions would have to involve Ukraine at some stage<\/a>, the Trump administration\u2019s actions and words have no doubt undermined Kyiv\u2019s position and influence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To that end, the U.S. is increasingly falling in line with Moscow on a key plank of the Kremlin\u2019s plan to delegitimize Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian government: calling for elections<\/a> in Ukraine as part of any peace deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Questioning Zelenskyy\u2019s legitimacy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Challenging Zelenskyy\u2019s legitimacy is part of a deliberate ongoing propaganda campaign<\/a> by Russia to discredit Ukrainian leadership, weaken support for Ukraine from its key allies and remove Zelenskyy \u2013 and potentially Ukraine \u2013 as a partner in negotiations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Claims by the Russian president that his country is ready for peace negotiations<\/a> appear, to many observers of its three-year war, highly suspect given Russia\u2019s ongoing attacks on its neighbor and its steadfast refusal to date<\/a> to agree to any temporary truce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the Kremlin is pushing the narrative that the problem is that there is no legitimate Ukrainian authority with which it can deal. As such, Putin can proclaim his commitments to a peace without making any commitments or compromises necessary to any true negotiation process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, painting Zelenskyy as a \u201cdictator\u201d dampens the enthusiastic support that once greeted him from democratic countries<\/a>. This, is turn, can translate to the reduction or even end of military support for Kyiv, Putin hopes, allowing him a fillip in what has become a war of attrition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Putin needs for this plan to work is a willing partner to help get the message out that Zelenskyy and the current Ukraine government are not legitimate representatives of their country \u2013 and into this gap the new U.S. administration appears to have stepped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Then-candidate Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a polling station during Ukraine\u2019s presidential election in Kiev on March 31, 2019. Genya Savilov\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Dictating terms<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Take the narrative on elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the meeting in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. reportedly discussed elections in Ukraine<\/a> as being a key part of any peace deal. Trump himself has raised the prospect of elections<\/a>, noting in a Feb. 18 press conference: \u201cWe have a situation where we haven\u2019t had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law.\u201d The U.S. president went on to claim, incorrectly, that Zelenskyy\u2019s approval rating was down to \u201c4%.\u201d The latest polling actually shows the Ukrainian president to be sitting on a 57% approval rating<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A day later, Trump upped the attacks<\/a>, describing Zelenskyy as a \u201cdictator without elections.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such statements echo Russia\u2019s narrative that the government in Kyiv is illegitimate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Kremlin\u2019s claims regarding what it describes as the \u201clegal aspects related to his [Zelenskyy\u2019s] legitimacy<\/a>\u201d are based on the premise that the Ukraine president\u2019s five-year term as president of Ukraine should have ended in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And elections in Ukraine would have taken place in May of that year had it not been for the martial law that Ukraine put into place<\/a> when the Russian Federation launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Martial Law Act \u2013 which Ukraine imposed on Feb. 24, 2022<\/a> \u2013 explicitly bans all elections in Ukraine<\/a> for the duration of the emergency action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And while the Ukrainian Constitution only includes language regarding the extension of parliament\u2019s powers until martial law is lifted, constitutional lawyers in Ukraine tend to agree that the implication is that this also applies to presidential powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notwithstanding what the law says, the Kremlin\u2019s questioning of the democratic institutions of Ukraine and its push for elections in Ukraine have found traction in Washington of late. Trump\u2019s special envoy Gen. Keith Kellogg declared on Feb. 1 that elections \u201cneed to be done\u201d as part of peace process, saying that elections are a \u201cbeauty of a solid democracy<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ballot box trap<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Zelenskyy is not opposed to elections<\/a> in principle and has agreed that elections should be held when the time is right. \u201cOnce martial law is over, then the ball is in parliament\u2019s court \u2013 the parliament then picks a date for elections,\u201d Zelenskyy stated in a Jan. 2 interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And he appears to have the backing of the majority of Ukrainians. In May 2024, 69% of Ukrainians polled said Zelenskyy should remain president until the end of marshal law, after which elections should be held<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue, as Zelenskyy has said, is the timing and circumstances. \u201cDuring the war, there can be no elections. It\u2019s necessary to change legislation, the constitution, and so on. These are significant challenges. But there are also nonlegal, very human challenges,\u201d he said on Jan. 4<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even opposition politicians in Ukraine agree that now is not the time. Petro Poroshenko, Zelenskyy\u2019s main political rival, has dismissed the idea of wartime elections<\/a>, as has Inna Sovsun, the leader of the opposition Golos Party<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apart from logistical problems of ensuring free and fair elections in the middle of a war, the conflict would present logistical hurdles to campaigning and accessing polling sites. There is also the question of whether and how to include Ukrainians in Russian-occupied territories and those who are internally displaced, as well as the 6.5 million<\/a> who fled fighting and currently reside abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good elections \u2026 and bad<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Russia did, of course, hold elections during the current conflict<\/a>. But the 2024 election that Putin won with 87% of the vote<\/a> was, according to most international observers, neither free nor fair<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather, it was a sham vote that only underlined what most political scientists will confirm: Elections are at best a necessary but insufficient marker of democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This point is not wasted on Ukrainians, whose commitment to democracy strengthened in the years leading up to the 2022 invasion<\/a>. Indeed, a survey taken a few months into the war found that 76% of Ukrainians agreed that democracy was the best form of governance \u2013 up from 41% three years earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are other reasons Ukraine might be wary of elections. The adversarial nature of political campaigns can be divisive, especially among a society in high stress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ukrainian politicians have openly argued that holding an election during the war would be destabilizing for Ukrainian society, undermining the internal unity<\/a> in face of Russian aggression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outside influence<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

And then there is concern over outside influence in any election. Ukrainians have had enough experience with Russian meddling in their politics<\/a> to take it for granted that the Kremlin will attempt to put a thumb on the scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russia has since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 employed its substantial resources to influence Ukraine\u2019s politics<\/a> through all available means, ranging from propaganda, economic pressures and incentives to energy blackmail, threats and use of violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2004, Moscow\u2019s electoral manipulations in favor of the pro-Russian candidate, Viktor Yanukovich, led to the Orange Revolution \u2013 in which Ukrainians rose up to reject rigged elections. Nine years later, Yanukovich \u2013 who became president in 2010 \u2013 was deposed though the Revolution of Dignity<\/a>, which saw Ukrainians oust a man many saw as a Russian stooge in favor of a path toward greater integration with Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Putin\u2019s history of meddling in elections extends beyond Ukraine, of course. Most recently, the Romanian Constitutional Court annulled the country\u2019s presidential elections, citing an electoral process compromised by foreign interference<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An impossible position<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In raising elections as a prerequisite to negotiations<\/a>, Putin is setting a \u201ccatch-22\u201d trap for Ukraine: The Ukrainian Constitution states that elections can happen only when martial law is lifted; but the lifting of the martial law is possible only when the \u201chot phase\u201d of the war is over. So without a ceasefire, no election is possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in refusing to agree to elections, Ukraine can be cast as the blockage to any peace deal \u2013 playing to a narrative that is already forming in the U.S. administration that Kyiv is the problem and will need to be sidelined for there to be progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, in seemingly echoing Russian talking points on an election being a prerequisite for peace, the U.S. puts the Ukrainian government in an impossible position: Agree to the vote and risk internal division and outside interference, or reject it and allow Moscow \u2013 and, perhaps, Washington \u2013 to frame Ukraine\u2019s leaders as illegitimate and unable to negotiate on the behalf of their people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lena Surzhko Harned<\/a>, Associate Teaching Professor of Political Science, Penn State<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lena Surzhko Harned, Penn State Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was shut out of the discussions concerning the future of his country, which took place in Saudi Arabia on Feb. 18, 2025. In fact, there were no Ukrainian representatives, nor any European Union ones \u2013 just U.S. and Russian delegations, and their Saudi hosts. The meeting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":38793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[115,817,46,295,47,296,4,38],"tags":[479,11215,474,885,891,886,860,105,11687,234,949,12657,1212,11506],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38792"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38792"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38794,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38792\/revisions\/38794"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}