Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's term expired on May 20, 2024, but he remained in office as head of state. The reason for this step is that representatives of the political parties represented in the Verkhovna Rada had already postponed all elections until the end of the war in November 2023.
The fact that Zelensky's term of office has expired according to the constitution is often highlighted by Russian representatives, including President Vladimir Putin, who responded by stating that the Kremlin considers Parliamentary Speaker Ruslan Stefantschuk to be the highest representative of the Ukrainian people.
However, the current administration of US President Donald Trump is also pushing for elections to be held, whether presidential or parliamentary. As his special representative for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, stated on February 1, the White House is demanding that both elections take place by the end of the year at the latest.
At the end of March, the weekly newspaper The Economist claimed that Zelensky wanted to call elections on April 20, at a time when the Verkhovna Rada was supposed to extend the validity of martial law.
Who else besides Zelensky
Opinion polls in Ukraine are generally reliable, although there are exceptions due to the ownership rights of the polling agencies. The SOCIS agency is owned by Ihor Hryniv, an associate and financier of former President Petro Poroshenko, while others are linked to oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk.
Nevertheless, they all share a kind of unified line, suggesting that Zelensky still has the best chance of possible re-election.
The clear favorite remains Valeriy Zaluzhny, former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and ambassador to London. While his popularity was higher than that of the president at the end of February/beginning of March 2024, with 41.4 percent voting for him, only 27.7 percent would vote for him in June this year.
These figures come from polls conducted by the SOCIS institute, which is affiliated with Poroshenko but gave him only 6.4 percent last year and 6.3 percent this year.
A poll by the independent agency Rating Group showed that Zalužný had only 25.3 percent of potential voters, while Zelensky had 35.2 percent. However, the general and ambassador appears to be the only challenger to the incumbent president, while Zelensky's predecessors—who may be hoping for a comeback—are not even reaching double-digit percentages in the polls.
Lessons from the past
As a former president, Poroshenko has repeatedly warned against President Zelensky's actions, which he believes are pushing Ukraine toward dictatorship. Zelensky froze Poroshenko's assets back in February and banned him from traveling to Hungary in 2023.
Alongside him, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who headed the government during Viktor Yushchenko's presidency, is also seeking the presidency. He regularly expresses his support for Zelensky and has not even announced his hypothetical candidacy.
Tymoshenko proposed her candidacy before the 2014 and 2019 elections, and according to her staff from the Batkivshchyna party, she had long aspired to the office of head of state. However, polls give her support in the range of 2.8 to 5.7 percent of respondents.
A March poll by the Ipsos agency also shows that, apart from Zelensky and Zaluzhny, no one else has more than five percent of respondents behind them. Sociologists also asked about other names – although most of them had never mentioned a presidential candidacy.
In the March poll, former presidential adviser Olexiy Arestovych, who began criticizing Zelensky after his resignation, also achieved a two percent approval rating. Before the pro-Western revolution, he was active in the radical right-wing Bratstvo party, although he had ended his membership in 2010.
The former presidents therefore do not enjoy sufficient support among the population to rely on in the event of a repeat election – nor do the former representatives of the Zelensky government. Neither Arestovych, former Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroisman, nor the former faction leader of the Servant of the People party, Dmytro Razumkov, achieved more than a single-digit share of the votes of those surveyed.
Another possible candidate is the mayor of Kyiv and multiple heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko. After breaking away from Poroshenko – whose party he had led into the Verkhovna Rada elections at one point – he founded his own party, whose name refers to his boxing career.
The abbreviation of the name “Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform” is UDAR, which means “blow” in Ukrainian. Despite this memorable pun and his world-famous name, he is not popular with voters – only one to two percent of respondents would vote for him.
However, Klitschko also pointed out that the country is sliding into authoritarianism under Zelensky's leadership. In an interview with Der Spiegel in December 2023, he said that the presidential office considers “mayors to be a remnant and an obstacle” on the path to the alleged centralization of power.
The boxer's comments followed the passage and subsequent repeal of laws that placed independent anti-corruption agencies under the authority of the Prosecutor General's Office, which in turn reports to the presidential office headed by Andriy Yermak.
Selenskyj's support is not growing either
The Ukrainian head of state's popularity was highlighted by some Western media outlets in February when they responded to US President Donald Trump's statement that Selenskyj had “at most four percent support” and later described him as a “dictator without elections.”
His “popularity” in polls conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) or the aforementioned Rating Group rose slightly after Trump's verbal attack, although it stood at around 57 percent at the time.
The director of the Kiev Institute, Anton Hrušeckyj, explained in an interview with the television station Deutsche Welle how the popularity of politicians develops. "When voters see the president abroad, when he speaks at summits and solicits the support of the West, his popularity rises. However, as soon as domestic issues such as corruption or mobilization are raised, confidence in Zelensky declines," he said.
The sociologist also criticized the inclusion of Zaluzhny and other military commanders in the polls, as none of them had expressed any intention of running in the presidential or other elections. According to Hrušecký, this ultimately distorts the actual support for the politicians.
DW included the director of the military intelligence service HUR, Kyrylo Budanov, as well as representatives of the controversial Azov regiment, Andriy Biletsky and Denys Prokopenko, among these commanders. However, each of them received no more than two percent of the vote.
So the situation looks promising for Zelensky. After Zaluzhny's “deportation” to the post of ambassador in distant Great Britain, polls show that he has no challenger. However, someone else could emerge from anonymity before the end of the war.
The likelihood of presidential elections taking place by the end of the year is diminishing, as the Ukrainian parliament approved an extension of martial law and mobilization for another 90 days until November 5 this year in mid-July. The situation on the front lines also does not favor this, as peace negotiations and efforts to reach a political agreement on a ceasefire and security guarantees are currently on hold.