Holding election in wartime would risk destroying Ukraine, says Zelenskyy

President sharply criticises proposal, saying ‘elections right now are a tsunami for the state that will split Ukraine’

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said holding elections in Ukraine during wartime would risk splitting the country at a time when Russia is amassing ballistic missiles and considering whether to mobilise an extra 300,000 soldiers.

The Ukrainian president, responding for the first time to a demand made by the sacked former defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov, sharply criticised an idea that he said was impractical given Russia appeared to have no interest in a ceasefire.

“I believe that if we want to destroy the country, then during such a war we can move in the selection of elections,” Zelenskyy said in a briefing to selected journalists that was held on Saturday, but details of which were reported on Sunday.

“I believe that during such a war, elections in general are big risks. Elections right now are a tsunami for the state that will split Ukraine ,” he said, adding that his plan was to end the war and preserve Ukraine as an independent state.

Elections have been suspended in Ukraine since martial law was imposed at the start of the full-scale invasion by Russia . Zelenskyy’s five-year term ended in May 2024 but there had until recently been little desire in Ukraine to hold a contest while the war continued.

That shifted when Fedorov, a popular minister who had been dismissed by Zelenskyy a month earlier , called for a fresh contest. It was the most open challenge to Zelenskyy’s authority from inside Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion.

Zelenskyy said, according to a transcript from the briefing, that if Ukraine’s allies were to establish “specific conditions” under which elections could be safely, legitimately and democratically held in Ukraine, he would support them.

It would require “the participation of the military, in frontline territories, abroad, where millions of our citizens have gone, fleeing the war” and a poll would have to take place safely “without strikes and shelling”, he said.

Fedorov, he said, had moved from his post because had had overreached, trying to cover functions belonging to the military. He had been offered four alternative jobs in the government but declined all four, the president added. “I really had and still have a very positive attitude toward Mykhailo,” Zelenskyy said. “We have been through a lot together. But I believe that he himself goes, or is pushed, into the wrong things.”

Russia had a stockpile of 600-630 high-speed ballistic missiles, its most potent type of weapon, and was trying to build a little more than 100 more a month in the run-up to winter, Zelenskyy said. Its maximum production capacity was 1,300 a year, he added.

Ballistic missiles have been used to bomb Ukrainian infrastructure and warehouses and to attack the capital, causing increased civilian casualties. There is a shortage of US-made Patriot interceptors, the only weapon that can effectively counter them.

“I wanted to secure 300 Patriot missiles for the winter package. The request from our air force is 360,” Zelenskyy said. He acknowledged this was difficult given that only about 600 of the most capable PAC-3 interceptor missiles were made a year. He said he had reached an agreement with France on at least one SAMP/T air-defence system ​this year, and with ‌Germany on the supply of ​about 600 PAC-2 and PAC-3 ​interceptors in 2027--28.

The US could help by supplying “some small percentage” of its stockpiles – about 5% to 10%, he added. Ukraine was willing to pay and it would mean the country “could get through the winter”, he said, calling on the US to make what would be “a very significant difference both in protecting lives and diplomatically”.

Following a conversation with Zelenskyy on Saturday, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said he had agreed to strengthen French support for Ukraine, including through the delivery of interceptor missiles, without giving further details.

Ukraine’s allies in the so-called coalition of the willing – an initiative led by France and Britain – will meet on Monday to look at how to ramp up pressure on Moscow to halt its invasion.

Russia is seeking to build up forces for a renewed effort to capture the rest of the eastern Donetsk province it does not control by the end of the year, though Zelenskyy said he was confident Moscow would fail to capture the area, comprising principally the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

The president said he believed Russia would try to conscript a further 300,000 soldiers after the Russian parliamentary elections in September. It would be a “peripheral mobilisation” conducted away from Moscow, St Petersburg and other main cities in an effort to regain momentum in the almost deadlocked frontline, he said.