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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
The Central Election Commission and the parliament are considering an unusual format for holding the upcoming elections in Ukraine — specially equipped buses that would serve as mobile polling stations. President Volodymyr Zelensky has previously spoken about readiness to hold elections under certain conditions, and now concrete ideas have emerged regarding the technical organization of the voting process. Alexander Kornienko, the first deputy speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, explained the proposal with buses. A decision to implement this format has not yet been made, and it remains unclear how many buses could be involved and which settlements they would serve.
Kornienko spoke about this idea during the podcast "Veterans and Politics." According to Kornienko, such an approach would simplify voting for as many citizens as possible.
"The bus arrives, you go through the front door, receive a ballot, a booth for voting, and you exit through the back door," described the mechanism by Kornienko, the first deputy speaker of the Verkhovna Rada.
According to the plan, a voter would enter the bus through the front doors, receive a ballot, proceed to an equipped booth, make a choice and drop the ballot into the box, and exit through the rear doors. This way, the streams of people entering and exiting would not cross.
At the same time, no decision has been made yet on such buses. It is also not specified where they would run, how many there should be, or which settlements they would serve.
Why the elections still have no date
The bus idea appeared amid the work of a special working group, which 26 established in the Verkhovna Rada in December 2025 to prepare comprehensive proposals on organizing elections in the conditions of a state of war and after the war. It was led by the same Alexander Kornienko, and representatives from parliamentary factions, relevant ministries, law enforcement agencies, and public organizations joined the work. 7 In January 2026 the Central Election Commission approved its own proposals regarding legislative regulation of nationwide elections, sending the document for consideration to a specialized committee and a working group.
Parliamentarians will have to consider not only the organization of polling station work but also citizens’ safety, accessibility of voting for people with disabilities and mobility-impaired groups, the participation of internally displaced persons, servicemen, and Ukrainians abroad. Holding elections during a state of emergency is strictly prohibited by Article 19 of the Law of Ukraine "On the Legal Regime of Martial Law," so there is still no specific date for the first post-war elections. In an interview published 23 in October, CVK member Serhiy Postyivyi emphasized that, according to the Commission’s proposals, the electoral process should start no earlier than six months after the termination or cancellation of martial law, while the presidential campaign would last 90 days and the parliamentary one 60. At that time, the final draft of a special law on the first post-war elections did not yet exist.
5 In November Volodymyr Zelensky allowed the possibility of online elections, including for service members on the front to exercise their right to vote. However, this does not mean that a decision on voting via "Diia" has been made — according to the president, the Verkhovna Rada must develop the corresponding legislative decisions, and there is currently no approved mechanism for internet voting.
Earlier, Informator reported that former defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov urged finding a mechanism to hold elections even in wartime, stressing that democracy cannot be hostage to Russia. We also wrote that the head of the Office of the President, Kyrylo Budanov, criticized this proposal, asking who guarantees recognition of the results of votes by people on the front line and in occupied territories. Moreover, Informator wrote that Volodymyr Zelensky himself previously stated he was ready to hold elections even tomorrow, but emphasized the impossibility of doing so safely during the war because of millions of citizens abroad and in occupied territories.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Українцям пропонують незвичний формат голосування на виборах - Корнієнко розкрив, що вигадала ЦВК". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Informator.
