How can you hold elections in a war?
For months, Ukraine has been caught up in a heated debate over whether the country needs to hold a presidential election next year as originally scheduled.
All elections – including presidential ones – are prohibited under the country’s current martial law, imposed after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Many in Ukraine are outraged by the idea, fearing a vote could distract the nation from its fight for survival.
Tensions eased after President Volodymyr Zelensky said in November that it was “not the right time” for elections.
But the issue seems to be far from over, and has fuelled a political confrontation unseen in the country since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
One of the big driving forces for the row though lies not in Ukraine, but the US.
US party politics
The discussion about Ukrainian elections is partly being pushed by US politicians ahead of the country’s election in 2024, particularly by a small group within the Republican party, says Olha Aivazovska, chairwoman of the election monitoring network Opora.
She argues that some hard-right Republicans are using the issue to justify their demand to block military aid to Ukraine.
And these voices are getting louder. As Donald Trump’s isolationist views gain greater influence in the Republican party, the issue of support for Ukraine gets caught up in US domestic politics and party divisions.
Although many Republicans support Ukraine, “it doesn’t mean that the far-right wing of this party will not use this topic against Ukraine next year [during] the presidential elections in the US,” Ms Aivazovska says.
They are already doing it. Earlier this month, Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the Republican candidates for the presidential nomination, claimed that Ukraine “is not a paragon of democracy” and is “threatening not to hold elections this year unless the US forks over more money”.
Republican US Senator Lindsey Graham had these voices in mind when, during his August visit to Kyiv, he said that Ukraine must hold presidential elections in 2024.
