Citizens In Eastern Ukraine Will Not Be Allowed To Vote, Zelensky Says

President Volodymyr Zelensky has confirmed that Ukraine and Washington are in talks about holding elections, after earlier this month he much belatedly said while under pressure from Trump that he’s ready to allow national elections, so long as they can be done fairly and freely.

Zelensky indicated current discussions also hinge on the US and other partners helping set the conditions so Ukrainians can vote in safety. He previously stated the country could hold a vote within 60 days – but only if there are security guarantees.

Already over the weekend he erected more barriers to holding a vote, stipulating that citizens in Eastern Ukraine would not be able to participate. 

“Any election in Ukraine can not be held in Russia-occupied parts of the country,” Zelensky has been quoted in international press as saying, and he once again added that a proper voting process can take place only if security is ensured.

He has also lately said that Ukraine’s foreign minister had started the initial work on the infrastructure needed for Ukrainians living abroad to participate.

The four oblasts that President Putin has called “our four new regions” and “our citizens forever” include Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions – and were annexed after a popular referendum during the first year of the war.

Putin has blasted Zelensky’s rule as illegitimate given the canceled elections based on enacting a state of martial law, and President Trump has expressed increasing agreement with this perspective.

Still, Zelensky’s new ‘openness’ with holding an election has been coupled with plenty of caveats and likely immense barriers. For example last week he said–

…that a ceasefire with Russia must be in place before elections can be held in Ukraine, “at least for the duration of the election process and voting”. Ukrainian law forbids wartime elections but US President Donald Trump is pressuring Zelensky, whose term ended last year, to hold a vote.

But Trump this month finally put some real pressure on him, it appears. Given Zelensky had put the brakes on the US-proposed pace plan by definitively rejecting the territorial concessions aspects to the document, the US president’s assessment in a recent Politico interview was blunt and highly critical, going so far as to basically call Ukraine not a democracy.

“They haven’t had an election in a long time,” Trump said. “You know, they talk about a democracy, but it gets to a point where it’s not a democracy anymore.”