Meaningful political contestation largely came to a halt in Ukraine when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. Ukrainian legislation prohibits elections while the country is under martial law. The government pooled television news into a single broadcast. Politicians and journalists made a concerted effort to present a united front – reflecting sentiment among the population at large that everyone should subordinate internal disagreements to face a common existential challenge. But Ukraine’s internal divides, usually visible in skirmishes in parliament and televised debates, did not entirely disappear. Instead, they relocated to kitchen tables, conference rooms and, of late, social media. Today, U.S. pressure on Kyiv to reach a peace deal with Moscow and hold elections is pushing them back into the public eye. Ukrainians are voicing increasing frustration with the government’s handling of the war and alleged corruption.

As prospective challengers begin jockeying for position, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is struggling to rebuild trust in a government that will have increasing difficulty running the country as long as the war continues – and might not survive a peace agreement. While the conditions for a political transition are not in place, Zelenskyy should begin laying the groundwork for the day when a renewal of Ukraine’s leadership becomes possible.

Zelenskyy’s popularity has swung wildly. One of the country’s best-known actors, Zelenskyy entered politics in 2019 as a complete novice, winning a 73 per cent landslide on the promise he would usher in honest governance. Zelenskyy also pledged to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end what was then a low-intensity war that had started in 2014, when Russia seized Crimea and fomented an insurgency in eastern Ukraine. Zelenskyy’s party, Servant of the People, named after his popular TV show and created to nominate him for president, won an outright majority in parliamentary elections that same year. The electoral maps that year erased the traditional split between Russian-speaking regions in the east and the more nationalistic regions in the west. Most Ukrainians were eager for a change from the oligarchic structures that had dominated their politics since independence in 1991.

Living up to his promises proved more difficult. Not only did Zelenskyy fail to bring peace to eastern Ukraine, but his government was also tainted by reports of financial impropriety as energy prices soared. On the eve of Russia’s all-out invasion in February 2022, Zelenskyy was struggling in the polls with approval ratings below 30 per cent. The low ratings might well have helped convince the Kremlin that Russian troops would be met as liberators deposing a highly unpopular administration.

Zelenskyy’s standing resurged as he led Ukraine’s defence, defying Putin in smartphone video clips and rallying crucial support in Europe and the United States. His renewed popularity, combined with his majority in parliament, the state’s wartime control of most media and the opposition’s willingness to let differences slide, allowed the president to consolidate power. Zelenskyy was uninterested in opposition parties’ offer to form a wartime “national unity government”. Instead, he bolstered his own administration under a chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, who kept internal rivals in check and directed much of Ukraine’s foreign policy. As time went on, officials who showed too much independence lost their posts, and parliament found itself sidelined in decision-making. With elections suspended under martial law, Zelenskyy did not have to face voters in the spring of 2024, when his first term normally would have ended.

Zelenskyy’s new approach did not go unnoticed, and each step he took toward centralising power lengthened the list of his detractors. In public, Zelenskyy’s domestic critics remained committed to a united front, but in private some said he was displaying the authoritarian tendencies of former President Viktor Yanukovych, who had fled to Russia in 2014 after violent street protests. Others warned that Ukraine was on its way to becoming an illiberal democracy. Still others grumbled that Yermak was meddling in battlefield decisions to Ukraine’s detriment. Ukraine’s backers abroad also took umbrage. A Western diplomat in Kyiv fumed to Crisis Group about the Zelenskyy government’s “bald-faced lying to our face” regarding promised judicial and anti-corruption reforms.

If Ukraine’s political truce once reflected a common willingness to put internal disputes on hold, now, almost four years later, it papers over deep fissures inside Ukraine over both the ruling clique that has formed around the president and his handling of the war, with complaints about matters ranging from lack of preparation to military planning. Meanwhile, members of Ukraine’s political class are quietly just as ambitious as before in their desire for power. In the words of Kyiv-based analyst Volodymyr Fesenko, politics in Ukraine are in a “sub-underground state”, meaning politicians are biding their time. Today, even with no election planned, ads promoting new faces with vague political messages are proliferating on billboards and social media platforms. Polls measuring Zelenskyy’s popularity match him up against high-profile figures from a range of backgrounds, including former commander-in-chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, who is now Ukraine’s ambassador in London, and champion boxer Oleksandr Usyk. A December 2025 poll found that Zelenskyy would come out in front with 22 per cent of a first-round vote, but that he would decisively lose a runoff against either Zaluzhnyi or Kyrylo Budanov – then chief of military intelligence and now chief of staff.

The rising demands for political renewal prodded the Ukrainian president into action, albeit not what critics had in mind. In July 2025, Zelenskyy reshuffled his cabinet, but largely kept loyalists in the top spots: Yuliia Svyrydenko, the economy minister widely seen as a Yermak protégée, became prime minister; Denys Shmyhal moved from the prime ministry to the minister of defence; and Rustem Umerov, criticised as an ineffective defence minister, left that post to run the National Security and Defence Council. This government was not substantially different than the previous one.

Zelenskyy then angered both opponents and, more importantly, constituents with his next move. Within days of the reshuffle, Zelenskyy rammed a law through parliament stripping the anti-corruption investigation bureau and prosecutor’s office, two agencies formed with Western assistance to prepare Ukraine for European Union membership, of their independence. This decision, which he justified as a means of combating “Russian influence”, sparked protests across Ukraine as well as strong pushback from EU leaders. Bowing to the pressure, Zelenskyy almost immediately rescinded the changes.

If the president’s reversal was a triumph for Ukrainian civil society, it also raised the question of why his government had gone after anti-corruption agencies in the first place. To many, the answer became clear scarcely three months later, as anti-corruption investigators charged Timur Mindich, a close associate of Zelenskyy, with running a ring that had extracted $100 million in kickbacks from contractors to Energoatom, the state nuclear power company. The sitting and former energy ministers were forced to resign; weeks later, Yermak also stepped down after his home and office were searched as part of the probe. (Mindich has refused to comment on the accusations, while the ministers have denied wrongdoing; Yermak has not been charged with any crime.) Investigators also questioned Umerov, the national security adviser and former defence minister, as a witness. Further aggravating the political crisis, the accusations of high-level corruption came on top of news of battlefield setbacks and the worst energy shortages since the 2022 invasion began. 

The investigations reaching into Zelenskyy’s inner circle and the protests that saved the anti-corruption agencies had something of a silver lining. They testified both to the viability of Ukraine’s democratic institutions and to the public’s faith in the country’s future. Despite Zelenskyy’s efforts to rein them in, the agencies maintained their autonomy. Further, the demonstrations showed that Ukrainians care deeply about clean government even under Russian fire. “Corruption is a ticking time bomb”, said Fesenko, the political analyst. “It irritates people during war, and when the war ends, the demand for anti-corruption will grow”. Nonetheless, while many Ukrainians think Zelenskyy shares blame for his lieutenants’ alleged misdeeds, thus far the corruption probes seem unlikely to topple him. In polls undertaken after news of the investigations broke, 59 per cent of respondents said Zelenskyy bore “personal responsibility” for the alleged corruption, while 61 per cent said they trust him, a figure practically unchanged since October.

So far, the most tangible result of the corruption investigations is that Yermak, long the president’s right-hand man, is out of power. “Everybody wanted it to happen”, a former Zelenskyy official told Crisis Group. “It feels like a fresh start”. Budanov, the former military intelligence head, has stepped into Yermak’s shoes, though the jury is still out on whether he will be a good fit. Right now the impression is one of a power vacuum, with Budanov lacking the influence that Yermak wielded. Whether or not the change will create space for more diverse voices to have input into policymaking is not clear.

Nor is it clear how Yermak’s departure will affect Kyiv’s approach to foreign affairs, given the outsized role he played, including as the frequent head of delegation for international negotiations. His abrasive style annoyed his interlocutors in Washington, in both President Joe Biden’s administration and President Donald Trump’s second one, suggesting that his departure could ease negotiations with Washington. Budanov, who has longstanding U.S. ties, would be well placed to help manage the vital but difficult bilateral relationship. For now, Umerov has replaced Yermak on the team negotiating with Trump administration officials. Umerov is seen as more accommodating than his predecessor by U.S. officials, but as he has also been questioned in the anti-corruption probe, there is a possibility that yet another top Ukrainian negotiator might come under pressure to step down.

The conundrum of Ukrainian politics has been that the country is thirsty for political renewal, but that most people reject the idea of elections under fire. In addition to the bar on elections under martial law, the obstacles to polls include the displacement of more than a quarter of Ukraine’s population, Russian occupation of swathes of territory where polls cannot be held and an active battle front. With all of Ukraine in range of Russian drone and missiles, basic security cannot be guaranteed. Even a vote that avoids serious irregularities would likely disenfranchise millions of people displaced by the fighting or living in Russian-occupied regions. Zelenskyy’s political opponents, though vexed at being cut out of decision-making, have recognised this reality: none has pushed for a vote, even after the president’s official five-year term expired in May 2024.

Not surprisingly, Putin has voiced a different view. Changing Ukraine’s government to one that Moscow could control, a project packaged in the Kremlin’s World War II-era language of “denazification”, was an original aim of the 2022 invasion. Putin, though himself far from a poster child for democracy, has described the Ukrainian president as illegitimate and said it would therefore be “pointless” to sign a peace agreement with him. The Russian leader has demanded that Ukraine hold elections so that he has a counterpart Russia would recognise as lawful. 

As for Washington, Trump returned to office seeming to echo the Kremlin line, blaming Ukraine for provoking the full-scale war and calling Zelenskyy “a dictator without elections”. In a December 2025 interview, Trump said the Ukrainian government was “using war not to hold an election”, supporting the idea of holding a presidential race soon. The Ukrainian president responded by saying he was prepared to hold wartime elections – under the seemingly impracticable condition that the U.S. and its allies provide security. Zelenskyy also urged lawmakers to work on legislation enabling voting under martial law, and later that month election officials began updating voter rolls.

Trump’s efforts at peacemaking have thus far put great pressure on Ukraine to agree to concessions to Russia – giving up on NATO membership and compromising on territory – even as the Kremlin continues to reject proposals based on those climbdowns. But this course of events has not weakened Zelenskyy politically. Indeed, since Trump publicly humiliated Zelenskyy in their first White House meeting in February 2025, Ukrainians have rallied behind their embattled president as he pushes back against White House demands, insofar as he can. Zelenskyy, for his part, points to public opinion to underline why he cannot give Moscow everything it wants. He can cite polls showing that majorities of Ukrainians continue to reject ceding Ukrainian-controlled territory to Russia in exchange for a settlement. There is a wide consensus that Putin’s goal is to control all of Ukraine – and that surrendering land might bring a pause in the fighting but not end the war. 

Ukraine’s presidential politics will not remain in suspended animation forever. For example, if Zelenskyy does reach a settlement with Putin, practically any outcome would create new political challenges for him. Under most plausible deals, Zelenskyy would be required to make significant concessions, and elections would take place on an accelerated timeline as part of the settlement. While it might depend on how the war progresses, it is easy to imagine broad dissatisfaction with Zelenskyy – who faced accusations of giving in to Putin for his efforts to seek peace prior to the full-scale invasion. With hundreds of thousands of soldiers home from the front, many angry at the circumstances of their return and politicians casting blame, the campaign could easily become ugly, even violent. Moscow would likely spread disinformation and covertly (or even overtly) support certain candidates in order to create further dissension, thinking that such a gambit would favour their efforts to weaken the country and assert control.

But Zelenskyy could also face political challenges if he resists pressure to accept an unpopular deal and the war then takes a pronounced turn for the worse. In one such scenario, Trump, who has toyed with the idea of breaking with Kyiv since coming back into office, might become frustrated with the lack of progress in peace talks, blame Ukraine and bring a definitive halt to weapons sales and intelligence support. Ukraine would find itself even more dependent on its European backers, which would not be able to fill all the gaps left by U.S. pullback. In this scenario, Ukrainian politics could descend into open recrimination and dissension as Ukraine’s military struggles accelerate.

Finally, even if the fighting halts on a relatively positive note for Ukraine, the Ukrainian public would likely insist that elections be held. Many in Ukraine hope that elections would bring in someone new. A Ukrainian official summed up a widely shared view this way: “We are blessed to have Zelenskyy as president in war and need to pray he’s not our president after the war”. 

For now, Zelenskyy has a slew of immediate problems. These include persistent personnel shortages at the front and holes in the budget that have made it difficult to pay social benefits. An overarching challenge is to define a vision for Ukraine’s path forward when a crucial benefactor, the U.S., has become highly unreliable. At the same time, the corruption investigation is not over, and it could touch others in high places. (If the July 2025 protests suggest anything, it is that Zelenskyy would be ill advised to interfere in it again.) It remains to be seen how the senior leadership team will gel in its new form: after appointing Budanov as his chief of staff, Zelenskyy further rearranged his team, making Defence Minister Shmyhal his energy minister and Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov the new defence minister.

Still, Zelenskyy and his team cannot afford to look past issues of democratic reform. In the short term, he may be able to rely on his old style of governing, but the public’s intolerance for his power consolidation has already been laid bare by the 2025 protests. By at least gesturing at the possibility of wartime elections, and also suggesting that he might not seek re-election, Zelenskyy appears to recognise as much. 

Zelenskyy should keep up both signals and actions that make clear his commitment to democratic, rights-respecting governance. For many in Ukraine and around the world, he has personified Ukrainian resilience under fire for almost four years. Now, perhaps the best thing he can do for his country is to begin laying the groundwork for what happens once he has left the political stage. It will take strong leadership to let the corruption investigations run their course during wartime, as well as to bring in a more inclusive government. One positive sign is that Zelenskyy has shown an openness toward meeting with potential political rivals, including Zaluzhnyi and his former foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba. 

In 2019, Zelenskyy won office on the promises of ending the war and cleaning up the way Ukraine was governed. Both remain essential for Ukrainians to achieve their aspirations to join its western neighbours in the European Union. Despite his wartime achievements, Zelenskyy’s legacy will depend on how he goes about fulfilling these promises.