“I believe Trump doesn’t care about whether Ukraine has elections or not. It’s Putin’s narrative, Putin’s goal. Trump is being used by Putin to impose elections on Ukraine with only one purpose, to undermine us from within. He wants to remove Zelenskyy because he is a symbol of our resistance. Putin understands that an election campaign during times of war will be destructive for our unity and for our stability,” he said.
Poaching parliamentarians
The tremors from the Oval Office bust-up are also triggering talk of parliamentary realignments.
Tymoshenko has in recent weeks been approaching lawmakers in rival parties to try to persuade them to defect and join her faction. She has told the lawmakers she’s been looking to poach that in her view, Zelenskyy will have no choice but to call elections soon, providing a golden opportunity to shape a new parliamentary majority.
Zelenskyy himself has dismissed the notion he’ll step down and joked with reporters in London over the weekend that even if elections were held this year, he’d likely win. “You would have to prevent me from participating in the elections,” he said, before suggesting, as he has previously, that he would only resign if Ukraine received NATO membership, as that would mean his mission was fulfilled.
On the face of it, Trump’s attacks haven’t weakened Zelenskyy, who initially received widespread praise, even from critics, for standing his ground in the Oval Office. But the predictable rally-round-the-leader effect is wearing off as the potential repercussions of the breakdown between Kyiv and Washington are absorbed, Bortnik said. The politics of the country is highly fluid, he argued.
Public opinion is also starting to shift regarding the war, with around a quarter of the population, largely comprising the military and their relatives, wanting the war to continue until the Russians have been ejected from all of Ukraine. But two-thirds of the population are more focused on talks and want the war to end — with half of those prepared to accept major concessions by Ukraine, and the other half eager for an immediate ceasefire, according to an analysis of polling data by Bortnik’s institute.