For three years now, the U.S.-NATO policy of eschewing peace talks in Ukraine and pursuing a hypothetical and increasingly unlikely military victory has been predicated on defending democracy.
Ukraine, we were told, has a vibrant, flourishing democracy, and preserving its survival is worth any cost — including the tremendous loss of life, physical destruction, and economic devastation borne by the country as a result of this policy.
Yet now, Western media and commentators are in a state of panic at simply the idea that Ukraine might have to do what they’ve been saying is the entire mission of the war effort: act like a democracy.
A little background: Ukraine should have held a presidential election last year, but with the government having declared martial law shortly after the Russian invasion in February 2022, that election has been indefinitely delayed until it is lifted. That move has been controversial, including in Ukraine, where critics have complained that Zelensky — whose popularity has dropped significantly since the start of the war, and who has suspended opposition political parties, arrested, intimidated, and sanctioned potential rivals, consolidated media under his control, and generally centralized power — is using it to avoid being removed from office.
Peace negotiations have thrown a further wrinkle into this, as Fox News reported, one of the possible stages of a three-stage peace plan discussed in U.S.-Russia talks to end the war would be for Ukraine to hold elections after a ceasefire, and before the settlement is signed. It is still far from clear whether holding an election would actually be in the mix, however, as a U.S. source later walked it back, Russia’s foreign minister denied the report, and the idea hasn’t popped up in other reporting on the discussions.
In any case, one would think that, given the overwhelming concern for Ukrainian democracy among war hawks, an election in the near future would be enthusiastically welcomed. After all, it would not only give Ukraine the chance to demonstrate its democratic bona fides, but it would also prove wrong Trump’s claim that Zelensky is a “dictator,” undermine a key part of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s propaganda, and give the Ukrainian president a renewed popular mandate.
Instead, as a host of Western commentators and news outlets now charge, a democratic election in Ukraine is not only impossible, but would be dangerous, wrong, and even part of a sinister Kremlin plot.
British journalist and media personality Piers Morgan called the idea “ridiculous,” pointing to the UK’s suspension of elections during World War II. Popular Twitter commentator Aaron Rupar likewise declared it “beyond ludicrous” for Ukraine “to hold an election when the country is an active war zone and 20 percent of it is under foreign occupation.” CNN anchor Jim Sciutto suggested the Kremlin would rig any election and possibly try and assassinate Zelensky.
Sciutto’s point represents a broad consensus among those opposed to elections, who appear to view any democratic process as part of a sinister Kremlin plot. The influential Democratic Party-aligned podcast MeidasTouch charged that Trump was simply trying to “remove Zelenskyy, replace him with a Putin stooge, and then let Putin take over Ukraine,” while the editor-in-chief of its website, Ron Filipowski, separately painted the prospect of elections as an unwelcome and unacceptable surprise, complaining that, in all the years Trump had talked about ending the war, “he never mentioned Putin’s election point.” Particularly absurd was film director and prominent liberal influencer Morgan J. Freeman’s claim that holding an election was “pure authoritrianism” and an attempt to “remove a patriotic democrat from power.”
This kind of rhetoric went beyond just posts on social media and was rife in reporting about the idea. The Telegraph speculated that “Russia will use the ballot to oust Ukraine’s wartime leader from office and install a pro-Putin candidate who would agree to peace terms favourable to Moscow.” The Guardian similarly warned that “candidates might emerge who are preferable to Russian interests,” namely “a ‘pro-peace, pro-normalization’ candidate” who “could hijack the discourse.” By pushing for elections, Trump was opening the door to Kremlin meddling in the country’s politics and “falling into [a] Putin-laid trap to delegitimize Zelenskyy,” wrote political scientist Lena Surzhko Harned.
Suddenly, elections are a threat to democracy, democracy is a Kremlin plot, and winning the vote of the public is a threat to legitimacy. All of this begs the question: for hawkish voices, was opposing negotiations and pushing for prolonging the war motivated by genuine concern for democracy, or were rhetorical paeans to democracy motivated by a desire for a longer war?
The various excuses used to square this circle don’t stand up to scrutiny. It’s true that the U.K. suspended its elections during World War II. It’s also true that the United States held an election during that same war, as did U.S. allies, like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In fact, while the U.S. has held elections during other wars too, many countries Americans regard as friendly democracies, including Israel, have also held elections while at war.
Not that long ago, the fact that Iraq and Afghanistan repeatedly held elections while they were hot beds of internal armed conflict was considered a milestone for their democratic aspirations. Suddenly, those who for years have talked up Ukraine’s democratic credentials think it can’t do the same, despite having transitioned to democracy more than a decade before them?
It’s true that a nearly year-old poll shows Ukrainians prefer an election wait until martial law is lifted. But as experts like Volodymyr Ishchenko, Ivan Katchanovski, and Gerard Toal have pointed out, there are profound methodological difficulties with polling in wartime Ukraine, including the inability to reach people by phone and the social pressures and speech restrictions that come with war mobilization. It strains credulity that we’re told to treat a wartime poll as the objective, authentic measure of Ukrainian opinion, but that letting the entire population express their will by secret ballot (and, at least in the plan reportedly discussed, during a ceasefire) is impossible and can’t be trusted.
There is no doubt Moscow will try to interfere in any Ukrainian election and influence its outcome. But as those like Sciutto and Harned inadvertently point out when they cite the country’s 2004 contest, there has been and never will be a Ukrainian election where that won’t be the case. If that were a legitimate reason to indefinitely delay elections, then that is an argument for democracy’s permanent suspension.
In fact, in 2019, war hawks routinely smeared Zelensky himself and his winning pro-peace campaign as “dangerously pro-Russian,” a gift to Putin, or even outright being run by “Kremlin agents.” When you read today’s commentators fretting that a “pro-peace, pro-normalization” candidate could “hijack” the election at Moscow’s behest, you can’t help but think that just like Zelensky’s opponents five years ago, their real fear isn’t the Kremlin “installing” the leader it prefers, but the Ukrainian people choosing a leader that Western governments and pundits personally don’t.
There is one last, particularly pernicious aspect to all this. The argument that a country can and must not hold elections if it is involved in a war or come under attack, or if the government has declared martial law, is a gift for any aspiring authoritarian looking to defy democracy. Those making it should take a moment to reflect on what they’re saying — they will be the first to wail in righteous outrage if a leader ever tried to do this at home.
