Earlier this week, the Financial Times pushed a headline-grabbing claim: that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was preparing to move toward elections and a national referendum on a potential peace deal, with suggestions swirling about a timeline as early as the end of February and announcements pegged to symbolic dates.
Kyiv’s response was swift and public. Zelenskyy flatly rejected the idea of rushing Ukraine into ballots while the country remains under martial law and under daily attack.
In multiple readouts reported this week, he stressed that elections would only be possible after a ceasefire and credible security guarantees, not before.
The referendum angle is being weaponised as a narrative: the implication that Ukraine can be hurried into legitimising a “deal” while Russian missiles are still in the air.
This line is not new and not tied to just Moscow, that has spent months, if not longer, pushing the claim that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is somehow “illegitimate” because Ukraine has not held elections during the war.
That argument is now being laundered into wider discourse, sometimes uncritically repeated or amplified even in Western media, stripped of its legal and security context.
What gets left out is simple but crucial: Ukraine’s constitution does not allow national elections under martial law. Martial law was introduced after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 and remains in force because the country is still under daily military attack. The legal logic is straightforward: you cannot run a free, fair, nationwide vote while millions are displaced, parts of the country are occupied, and cities are under missile and drone strikes, all while Russia continues to reject any meaningful ceasefire. Any election held under those conditions would be neither fair nor representative, and would be instantly contestable, which makes the claim itself all the more bizarre.
This is precisely why Kyiv views the sudden push for “just hold elections” as political warfare rather than a good-faith democratic concern. Russia, which itself stages tightly controlled, non-competitive votes, is attempting to use the language of democracy to undermine Ukraine’s leadership in the middle of a war it started.
Reuters reported this week that Zelenskyy said Ukraine is ready to consider democratic processes, including both a presidential election and a referendum, but only if an agreement protects Ukraine’s interests, and only under conditions that make voting possible, secure, and legitimate. He also pushed back on the idea of holding votes on 24 February, the anniversary of the full-scale invasion, stressing that a ceasefire and firm security guarantees would have to come first.
A referendum or election conducted under fire would not be an expression of popular will; it would be a political tool shaped by fear, displacement, and coercion. Framing this as a simple scheduling issue ignores both the constitutional reality and the battlefield reality, not least the millions of Ukrainians living under occupation who could not freely participate at all.
In other words, the debate is not about whether Ukraine values democracy; it is about whether democracy can exist at all while Russia continues to bomb the country. The fact that this Russian talking point is now echoing in parts of Western coverage is telling, and worrying. It risks undermining morale and normalising the idea that Ukraine should be pressured into political theatre first and security second: a reversal of every lesson learned from conflicts where rushed “peace processes” locked in instability rather than ended it.
This is consistent with the broader message Zelenskyy has repeated in recent months: Ukraine is not collapsing, and it is not on the brink of “accepting reality.” In an interview cited by Ukrainska Pravda from NBC News, he put it plainly: “We are not losing this war, and Putin is not winning.”
From my perspective inside Ukraine, the speed of the shutdown tells you two things. First, the President’s office understands just how dangerous this information space is right now. Second, it shows an awareness that “peace talk season” can become a soft-target moment, politically, psychologically, and physically, especially without a ceasefire, and that is the core risk, diplomacy is happening in parallel with escalation. How can than work?
Russian strikes have continued, and in places, intensified, hitting ports, rail infrastructure and civilian areas, with power and heating disruptions still rippling through cities. Ukrainian Air Force reporting this week described another large overnight wave: 154 drones and one missile, with 111 drones intercepted.
A simple snapshot of that night’s air picture:
- Launched: 155 (154 drones + 1 missile)
- Intercepted (drones): 111
- Not intercepted / impact risk: 43+ (depending on the missile outcome)
Dnipro, meanwhile, was hit again, the kind of story that often struggles to break through internationally unless casualties are mass-scale. Assessments this week noted strikes that reportedly left around 10,000 residences in the city without power.
On top of that came repeated public alerts about a possible “Oreshnik” ballistic threat, another reminder that there is no safe “political window” while Russia retains the freedom to strike and kill at will.
So when rumours about elections and referendums dominate headlines, it is worth asking: why is a speculative political storyline travelling faster than the reality of ongoing attacks, and why now, when Russia has offered no meaningful concessions and continues to press maximalist demands?
In wartime, narratives are not background noise, they are part of the fight.
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