Back
Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba believes it is a mistake to hold elections in Ukraine only after the war ends. In his view, such an approach rests on two assumptions that may not come true.
Kuleba stated this while commenting on the prospects of the future electoral process in Ukraine.
According to him, proponents of delaying elections assume that the war will end soon, and that after it ends the election campaign will be more civilized and predictable.
“The idea that we will hold elections after the war is based on two hypotheses. The first is that the war will end soon. The second is that elections after the war will be more civilized than elections during the war. I believe that both hypotheses are false,” Kuleba said.
He noted that Ukraine does not know exactly when hostilities will end. If the war lasts for a few more years, in his view, the state should adapt its political system to the new realities just as it has already done with the economy and everyday life.
“And what if it lasts for another three years? We will live in a model that formed in 2019 years, emotionally exhausted already. People crave new members of the Verkhovna Rada,” the former minister said.
In Kuleba’s view, the electoral process in wartime could be clearly regulated: limit the duration and format of the campaign, identify issues that should not be brought into political debate, and achieve broad consensus on the necessity of conducting elections calmly.
He believes such a process could become a way to renew key state bodies without waiting for an indeterminate end-date of the war.
At the same time, Kuleba urged not to make premature forecasts about potential candidates for future elections. In particular, he does not advise evaluating the possible competition between Mikhail Fedorov and Volodymyr Zelensky at this time.
“We do not know what state the country will be in at the moment elections begin. And perhaps some other name will pop up,” he noted.
Kuleba reminded that political alignments can change significantly right before elections. He said that not long ago Fedorov was not considered a potential candidate, and during the presidential elections 2014 year the ultimate favorite became Petro Poroshenko, although before the start of the campaign no primary bets were placed on him.
“At the moment the elections are announced, we may find ourselves in a completely different history,” Kuleba concluded.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Кулеба запропонував перебудувати політичну систему України під умови тривалої війни". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Bagnet.
