Dismissed Ukrainian defence minister challenges Zelenskyy with call for wartime election

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's defence minister until July, released a nine-minute video address late Tuesday evening that amounted to the sharpest political blow Volodymyr Zelenskyy has absorbed since Russia's full-scale invasion began in 2022. Fedorov did not name the president directly, but his message was unmistakable: he called for a wartime presidential election and accused the government of operating in opacity, making decisions based on personal loyalty rather than merit, and blocking reforms without explanation to the public.

The 35-year-old politician's dismissal last month had already sparked street protests in Kyiv. He had moved from Ukraine's digital ministry—where he championed the country's rapid adoption of drone warfare—into the defence portfolio, a posting widely regarded as effective until his sudden removal following a clash with military commander General Oleksandr Syrskyi. That firing triggered enough public outcry to cost Syrskyi his job, though Fedorov was not brought back. On Wednesday, Zelenskyy formally nominated Yevhen Khmara, the acting defence minister, for permanent confirmation by parliament.

Fedorov's core argument struck at something deeper than personnel disputes. "Democracy cannot be held hostage by Russia," he said in the video. "We are fighting precisely because we want to remain a free European state." He contended that Ukraine could wage war and hold elections simultaneously, that the country needed to restore full democratic process even in prolonged conflict. The implicit critique was that Zelenskyy's government had allowed the emergency of war to calcify into something else—a system where citizens no longer understood how decisions were made, where advancement depended on proximity to power rather than competence.

Elections have been suspended since martial law took effect in February 2022. Zelenskyy's five-year term technically ended in May 2024, but there has been little appetite within Ukraine to hold a contest while the country bleeds. The practical obstacles are severe: millions have been displaced or exiled, more than a million are serving in the armed forces—many on the frontline—and roughly one-fifth of Ukrainian territory remains under Russian occupation. Political analyst Artem Bronzhukov noted the obvious hazard: conducting a national election while Russian bombing continues would be extraordinarily difficult to secure.

Yet polling data suggested Fedorov's challenge had teeth. A survey conducted by the Socis Centre for Social Research at month's end showed Fedorov placing third in a first-round presidential vote with 13.1 percent, behind Zelenskyy at 22.3 percent and former military commander Valerii Zaluzhnyi—now Ukraine's ambassador to the UK—at 21.4 percent. More striking: in a runoff scenario, the same polling indicated both Fedorov and Zaluzhnyi would defeat Zelenskyy. Ukraine uses a two-stage voting system, which meant the incumbent's apparent strength in a crowded field could evaporate in a head-to-head contest.

Protests had been occurring nightly in the square below the presidential office in central Kyiv, though attendance had dwindled until a special rally on Sunday drew roughly two thousand people, many chanting Fedorov's name. Bronzhukov observed something more subtle in the unrest: it demonstrated that Ukraine remained "a warring democracy," that even amid invasion, citizens were willing to challenge their government. There was, he said, a "fairly deep-rooted view" within Ukrainian society that elections should happen—just not yet, not until the hot phase of the war ended.

Fedorov's intervention represented something the Zelenskyy administration had largely avoided since 2022: a sustained, public, politically coherent challenge from within the establishment itself. The former defence minister was not a fringe voice or an exile. He had served in government, understood its machinery, and was now arguing that the machinery itself had become corrupted by the very emergency it was meant to manage. Whether that argument would gain traction depended partly on what happened next in parliament, partly on whether the street protests could sustain momentum, and partly on whether other figures in Ukraine's political class would echo Fedorov's call or distance themselves from it.