Under the fog of war, Ukraine cancels its 2024 presidential elections

The Zelensky-led government has transformed the country into a totalitarian dictatorship, as there is no semblance of a liberal democracy left in Ukraine.

A very significant political event occurred in Ukraine earlier this month, and almost nobody noticed.

President Volodymyr Zelensky, the leader of the war-torn country, just received approval from his parliament to extend Martial Law another 90 days. There have been many parliamentary extensions of the wartime mandate, but this one carried special significance because the 2024 presidential elections in Ukraine were scheduled for March 31, 2024, coinciding with the end of Zelensky’s five year term. Now that Martial Law is in place to cover that time period, Ukraine’s presidential elections have been canceled indefinitely.

There is currently no set date for a next election, as lawmakers in the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) have failed to entertain the matter. They only agreed that elections should take place no sooner than six months after the end of the war with Russia.

While it’s not particularly unreasonable to want to postpone elections during a devastating war, the case of Ukraine deserves a closer examination, given the series of events leading up to the decision to extend Martial Law.

In November, a former Zelensky adviser named Oleksiy Arestovych announced that he would be challenging Zelensky for the presidency, promising to focus on a negotiated settlement to end the war with Russia. Arestovych was fiercely critical of Zelensky’s approach to the conflict, maintaining that a settlement was in the best interests of Ukrainians. Far from a pro-Moscow shill, the Russian government has an active arrest warrant out for him.

Yet just days after his announcement, Ukraine’s National Police force, under the direction of the Zelensky government, launched a criminal investigation against Arestovych.

Furthermore, over the course of the devastating war, the Ukrainian government has continually centralized power to the point that no trace of a representative democracy currently exists in the country.

Zelensky has repeatedly sicced his national police on any and all current and former Ukrainian officials who depart from the accepted narrative of the war, which essentially amounts to fighting Russia to the very last Ukrainian, if necessary. Virtually every dissident from the forever war narrative ends up on the wrong side of a corruption investigation, or worse.

All opposition parties have been removed from the parliament, and all non-state media has been banned from the airwaves. The paranoia-infused government has even signed into law a measure to ban all new Russian books from being imported into the country.

Ukraine’s 2024 elections served as the last means of restoring accountability for a government hellbent on advancing a strategy of geopolitical seppuku, continuing to force its countrymen to wage war against a much more powerful neighbor.

Under the cover of the fog of war, the Ukrainian government has transformed into a totalitarian dictatorship, losing the moral high ground it once maintained with the public at the beginning of hostilities. When the war finally ends, the Ukrainian people will have to find a way to restore some semblance of the constitutional order that has been shattered in just two years’ time.