According to pro-Kremlin media, Ukraine will not organize elections until the West abandons Zelenskyy and changes the regime in Kyiv following the model used to change the regime in Venezuela.
NEWS: Presidential elections in Ukraine will only take place in the event of a change to the Zelenskyy regime. This is explained by the fact that his actions are under the full control of the USA and Great Britain, which, by setting Kyiv's policy, exclude the possibility of organizing the ballot, the former Prime Minister of Ukraine, Mykola Azarov, has said.
“Elections will take place this year only under one condition: if the Zelenskyy regime no longer exists. That is, it will be replaced by another regime. It will be replaced in the way Americans are accustomed to replacing regimes. There is no other way out”, the politician is convinced.
In his opinion, when Zelenskyy’s protectors no longer need him, they will make allegations against him and he will be sent to prison. As an example, Azarov invoked the President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro. However, this scenario will not materialize anytime soon because, currently, the Ukrainian authorities have masters whose plans do not yet include regime change, the former Prime Minister concluded.
Zelenskyy said that presidential election in Ukraine will not take place during any “break” in hostilities, but only after the full end of the conflict. Thus, he rejected the scenario of organizing the vote during a “temporary armistice”, which he referred to on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
NARRATIVES: 1. The regime in Kyiv is controlled by the US and Great Britain. 2. Elections can only take place if the West replaces Zelenskyy. 3. The President of Ukraine is not organizing presidential elections in order to stay in power.
PURPOSE: To delegitimize Ukraine's political leadership. To present the Ukrainian state as lacking sovereignty. To shift responsibility for the impossibility of organizing elections from Russia to Kyiv and the West. To justify the large-scale invasion by the Russian Federation.
Ukraine cannot organize elections because it is under Russian attack, not because Zelenskyy does not want to
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: The text published by Gazeta.ru starts from a real situation — Ukraine is not organizing presidential elections during the war — but deliberately changes the cause. Elections have not been postponed because the “Zelenskyy regime” is blocking the electoral process, but because Ukraine has been under martial law since February 24, 2022, the day of the Russian invasion. Under these circumstances, Ukrainian legislation does not allow for the organization of any round of elections, and the presidential ballot that was supposed to take place in 2024 has been postponed.
The narrative omits the primary cause of the election postponement, namely, Russian military aggression. If Russia had not launched the full-scale invasion and did not continue the attacks on Ukraine, the problem of organizing elections would not exist. Russian propaganda reverses the causal relationship: the war provoked by Russia is nowhere mentioned, and its effects are attributed exclusively to the leadership in Kyiv. Zelenskyy is accused of both blocking the electoral process and continuing the war.
The claim that the USA and Great Britain control the government in Kyiv reiterates one of the central narratives of Kremlin propaganda from the last decade: Ukraine is not a sovereign state, but an entity led by foreigners. In fact, the military, financial and diplomatic support granted to Ukraine by Western partners aims to support the attacked state. This support does not negate the capacity of Ukrainian institutions to make independent decisions. Furthermore, Zelenskyy did not say that elections cannot be held during breaks in hostilities, but linked their organization to the existence of a real truce, security guarantees and a safe infrastructure for voting.
Gazeta.ru distorts the meaning of Zelenskyy's statements regarding the impossibility of organizing elections. At the Munich Security Conference, Zelenskyy referred to the possibility of elections only in the case of a real armistice, mentioning specifically the difficulty of ensuring the vote for soldiers on the frontline. It is worth mentioning that organizing elections does not just mean opening polling stations on a certain day. The procedure involves the formation and functioning of electoral commissions, updating electoral lists, registering candidates, conducting the electoral campaign, its financing, ensuring equal access to the media, printing and transporting ballots, securing polling stations, organizing national and international observation, counting votes and resolving eventual appeals. The Central Electoral Committee of Ukraine estimated that, once the martial law ends, a preliminary period of six months would be necessary before resuming the electoral process.
The conditions mentioned above are difficult to ensure in a state attacked day by day with missiles and drones, with soldiers mobilized on the frontlines, with occupied territories and with millions of citizens displaced outside their settlements. According to Eurostat, in February 2026, approximately 4.4 million people who fled Ukraine benefited from temporary protection in the EU. Russian propaganda omits all these facts. A ballot organized without the participation of a significant part of citizens and without observers would risk producing the exact opposite effect: contesting the result, excluding large categories of voters and making Ukrainian institutions vulnerable in the middle of a war.
The comparison between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Nicolás Maduro is used to promote the idea that the West will abandon the Ukrainian president. This comparison functions as a rhetorical tool, without having any connection to the political reality of an attacked state. It creates the impression that the fate of Ukraine and other states depends on a Western conspiracy, and that the change of regime in Kyiv is the result of an external mechanism, not an internal democratic process.
Through the comparison with Maduro, Russian propaganda shifts the discussion from the real problem (the impossibility of organizing elections in a state invaded by Russia) toward a false analogy with a leader captured following criminal charges, suggesting that Zelenskyy must also be removed based on an external intervention so that Ukraine can return to democracy. Gazeta.ru does not explain why Ukraine cannot organize elections, nor does it mention the war triggered by Russia.
BACKGROUND: Although he frequently comments on political developments in Ukraine, Mykola Azarov does not represent the position of Ukrainian society, being a fugitive politician aligned with the Kremlin’s interests. A court in Kyiv sentenced the former Prime Minister in absentia to 15 years in prison and seized his assets, after he was found guilty of state treason, attempt at the violently overthrow the constitutional order, and justification of Russian aggression. The investigation claims that Azarov collaborated with Russian special services and used his Telegram channel to disseminate pro-Kremlin propaganda, benefiting from the support of two employees of the local administration in Kyiv.
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